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►

6|S SloJJO

llarbarb CoUege library

FROM THE

BRIGHT LEGACY

One half the income from this Legacy, which was re-
ceived in 1880 under the will of

JONATHAN BROWN BRIGHT
of Waltham, Massachusetts, is to be expended for books
for the College Library. The other half of the income
is devoted to scholarships in Harvard University for the
benefit of descendants of

HENRY BRIGHT, JR.,
who died at Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1686. In the
absence of such descendants, other persons are eligible
to the scholarships. The will requires that this announce-
ment shall be made in every book added to the Library
under its provisions.

THE JUSTICE

OF

THE MEXICAN WAR

A REVIEW OF THE CAUSES AND RESULTS OF THE

WAR, WITH A VIEW TO DISTINGUISHING EVIDENCE

FROM OPINION AND INFERENCE

BY

CHARLES H. OWEN

M.A. (Yale), LL.B. (Harvard)

Formerly of Staff Fourth Division, Second Corps,

Army of Potomac

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

Sbe ftnfchetbocliec ptese

1908

^Qf7 ^ t r if^

(Lajjx^aX ^^A

Copyright, 1908

BY

CHARLES H. OWEN

1i;»(p KnlcfterbKlicr prew. Hew

PREFACE

IN this volume I have aimed, by a review
correcting the misapprehensions of his-
torians relative to the involved and contradic-
tory movements of the period o£ the Mexican
War, to vindicate the justice of that war;
to acquit the United States, as a nation, of
the most serious, if not the only, charge ever
laid against her honor; and to remove the
cloud from her just title to her largest
possession.

I feel sure that I have stated grave reasons
for impeachment of the methods and some
of the conclusions of many prominent
historians. In considering their books I
have criticised them when they followed
what seemed to me a bad method; and have
done so partly from a belief that to correct
a bad method in the writing of histories is
of more consequence than to correct false
impressions as to a given period of history,
even of so important a period as that which

IV Preface

culminated in the Mexican War. To make
either correction involves antagonizing writers
of established reputation and recognized
ability so numerous and influential that a
general criticism of their methods unaccom-
panied by illustrations would be inadequate;
while to dispute their conclusions by the
bare statement of other conclusions would
be presumption.

There has seemed to me, therefore, to be
no way open for proper criticism other than
to present some arguments against accepted
fallacies. The result is a monograph which a
friend has quite correctly characterized as **a
lawyer's brief," and, he was kind enough to
add, **a brief that proves its point." I hope
I shall have readers who will agree with him.
It has been my endeavor to sift the evidence
introduced by historians and not so much
to confront their conclusions with contra-
dictory evidence as to distinguish actual evi-
dence from opinion, assumption, or mistaken
a priori reasoning. The subject of the
causes of the Mexican War lends itself well,
by way of illustration, to this purpose, be-
cause it is one about which there has been
X written much that is erroneous, and much
that is traceable to prejudice.

Preface v

It is noticeable that the errors of historians
occur chiefly in their rapid summarizing of
historical settings for their main subjects.
The Mexican War was earlier than the period
to which Mr. Rhodes directs his research;
and Professor Woolsey's statements as to
the premature recognition of Texas are^
remotely incidental to the subjects he had
under special consideration in his work
upon International Law. On the other
hand, John M. Niles, Pease, Williams, and
Yoakum, having Mexico and Texas under
. direct observation, are not chargeable with
other than minor errors; and I desire to
acknowledge a free use of their works.

Criticisms of my own errors I cordially
invite. Indeed by criticising others I have
challenged criticism of myself. If a critic
will support his statement of an error by
proof, his criticism will be received with
gratitude; and to make an acknowledg-
ment of such error will be a chief reason for
any possible new edition of this book. I
confess myself to be in love with my con-
clusions. But I sincerely trust that I and all
who dare to attempt the writing or altering
of a line of history are more in love with
the truth. I should do great injustice to my

VI Preface

feelings, if I did not express gratitude for the
generous encouragement I have received
from Professor George Pierce Garrison of the
University 'of Texas, the leading authority
on the history of Texas and her admission into
the Union, who pointed out to me, after a
necessarily hurried examination, what he
was kind enough to call ** errors in relatively
unimportant details.''

C. H. O.

Hartford, Conn.
March 15, 1908.

CONTENTS

PACK

Introduction ..... i

I

NiLEs' Opinion 21

II

Character is Evidence ... 30

III
The Wolf ...... 34

IV
The Wolf's Cub .... 42

V
The Lamb ...... 72

VI
Anticipations op Trouble in Texas . 86

VII
The Lamb Assaults the Cub , . 98

viii Contents

PAGE

VIII
Recognition . . . . .132

IX
Mixed Motives . . . . .142

X
Claims and Correspondence . .164

XI
Correspondence . . . .185

XII

Boundaries. ..... 214

XIII
Foreign Intervention and Annexation 237

XIV

War and its Consequences . . 254

THE
JUSTICE OF THE MEXICAN WAR

THE JUSTICE OF THE
MEXICAN WAR

INTRODUCTION

THERE is no rule of International Law by
which casus belli is definable. The
justice or injustice of a war can be deter-
mined only by ethical standards, which are
subject to great individual variation in
their acceptance. There is, therefore, great
license allowable in approving or condemning
any given resort to war; and in this day of an
enlightened feeling that all war is a loss
to civilization, whose objects ought to be
attained by more humanized means, such
condemnation is far more easily extended
than limited; and it should be so.

When, therefore, General Grant, or Presi-
dent John Quincy Adams, or Cyrus Town-

2 The Mexican War

send Brady, LL.D., the latest historian to
develop the topic, expresses an opinion that
the war waged by the United States with
^/^exico was unjustifiable, or that exorbi-
tant terms of peace were exacted at its
close, one is obliged to concede the right to
hold that opinion, with some regret, perhaps,
at the manner of its expression; and is put
upon inquiry as to how unrelenting a whig
or abolitionist the contemporary of the
events in question was, how well the historian
has weighed opposing opinions and evidence,
and how far he has been biased by some
given school of research or overwhelmed
by the numbers and vehemence of its
exponents.

Historians and biographers should not rant
in lurid phraseology, nor use such phrases as
'* harpies of the United States," or ** Polk's
^ ferocious war message with its howling cata-
logue of grievances," ^ or **the sin against the
political Holy Spirit."^ When they quote
the opinions of partisans as authoritative
sources; indulge in inference, innuendo, or

> History of the United States, James Schouler, Boston,
1889, vol. iv., p. 306.

2 The Constitutional and Political History of the
United States, H. Von Hoist, Chicago, 1881, vol. ii., p.
167.

Introduction 3

defamation of dignitaries without citation
of detailed evidence, their methods and /
conclusions certainly invite review, both of/
conclusions and methods.

How nearly uniform are the dentmciations (
of the Mexican War expressed by historians,
and how difficult a task is their confutation,
may be inferred from Goldwin Smith's brief
account of:

"The quarrel with Mexico, which formed
as striking an illustration as history can
furnish of the quarrel between the wolf and /
the lamb, and which no American historiaiy
of character mentions without pain." ^

For although Dr. Smith's reckless use of
the general negative commits him to the
equivalent of a denial of character to Yoa-
kum, Williams, John M. Niles, Memucan
Hunt, Stephen P. Austin, and Presidents
Tyler and Polk; and although all he says
relative to the Mexican War can be refuted ;
his sweeping summary, though untrue, does
not misrepresent the trend of a majority of
American publications, and those which
advertising or the position of the writers has
rendered most prominent.

» The United States Politcal History, Goldwin Smith,
New York, 1893, p. 211.

4 The Mexican War

Their own opinions, instead of the ulti-
mate facts on which their opinions are
based, are freely expressed by modem
writers, many of whom print a long list of
books in a bibliography of their subject,
and then, without further reference thereto,
proceed with a consecutive and entertaining
narrative, in which cause and effect is
traced between one set of events and another;
too often making a mistaken estimate of
a priori probabilities pass for actual evidence
of occurrences which never occurred.

Sometimes the unexpected happens.

This so-called philosophical method in
history is certainly conmiendable, so far
as it gives incentive and means for testing
doubtful authority by the light of credibility,
inquiring whether in view of times and
places and the logic of events, it seems sup-
posable that certain alleged transactions took
place; accepting the allegations as fact
only, if they have the stamp of likelihood
or of proof. But it is dangerous error not to
cast aside always anything in the nature of
conjecture, when proof can be had; and a
failure to cite chapter and page of authorities
puts upon a reviewer the burden of nearly
as extended reading for a conscientious

Introduction s

criticism as was required in making the book
itself.

I shall follow the philosophical method
of inquiry into probabilities in the acceptance
of evidence sufficiently to assume that, in
a long list of American statesmen, the people
seem to have evinced sufficient discrimination
in their estimate of public characters to have
seldom elected a convicted and unmitigated
liar to distinguished position. I shall be
actuated by the presumption that the burden
of responsibility and duty, acknowledged
formally by an official oath, has, with almost
entire imiformity, been accompanied, or
followed, by decorum and decency in the
public, and generally in the private conduct
of our highest officials. I shall assume that
the desire and ability of a first magistrate and
his immediate assistants must be so great
to exhibit a creditable and successful ad-
ministration, and make for themselves honor-
able reputations, that he and they will be
kept, at least as to foreign relations, from
ridiculous and manifestly untruthful public
statements; and that, for instance, when
a President freed from temptation to court
popular favor addresses in secret session the
senior branch of Congress — ^his coequal in

6 The Mexican War

the diplomatic action of the State — ^his
relation (after the seal of secrecy has been
removed) is to be accepted as more reliable
than the tirade of an outvoted political
opponent, the lament of transcendentalists,
or the skit of a lampoonist of however keen
a wit, or poetic and literary charm. I shall
assume that when a writer cites mere opinions
from such a tirade or skit as historical
authority, he indicates a poverty of reliable
evidence to support what he asserts, and a
bias which puts his conclusions under grave
suspicion.

I shall take it for granted that, when
National leaders and diplomats are accused
of fraud in conducting the administrative
functions prescribed for them, and of so
misconducting the international relations,
intrusted to their observances of propriety
and good form, that the result is a mass
of correspondence denounced as a disgrace to
their Nation and their people, if it is not
incumbent on the accusers to be, themselves,
governed by such rules of court-martial, or
civil courts, as would throw out their charges
unless reduced to answerable specifications,
they are at least amenable to ordinary rules
of logic and fair-play. I shall assume that

Introduction 7

such accusations are unworthy of belief, or
of any respectful attention, unless substan-
tiated by evidence of some fact. And I
shall not accept as evidence of a fact which,
if it is a fact, can be exhibited by record, the
opinion of any person, not even of a much-
badgered ex-President.

The burden of proof is always with the
accuser. However the weight of evidence
may shift, the burden of proof remains always
upon the accuser, whether in the r61e of
public prosecutor he pleads to the bench, or
in the assumed r61e of the historian, brings
his impeachment before the tribunal of
public opinion. In no case can an accuser
force upon the defence the assumption of
the general negative.

If, in any case, I have taken the trouble
to point out any facts inconsistent with
general and unsubstantiated allegations, it
is more because I have wished to make
smoother the path of whoever shall event-
ually write a history of the United States,
than because I feel compelled to answer a
general complaint by anything other than
a general denial, or to join issue when no
issue is legitimately presented.

I do not by any means forget that, in any

8 The Mexican War

just and formal court, a motion to amend or
a demurrer would be sustained by an order
to strike out as ** irrelevant" and ** imperti-
nent" the great mass of conjectures, in-
nuendoes, insinuations, hints, which, with
much valuable and often reliable statement,
has gone to make up the enormous aggregate
bulk that has passed for history of the causes
of the Mexican War. But it is because of the
bulk of such literature that it may seem,
to some, worth while to offer an occasional
illustration of how far an approximation to
research may result in exhibiting the contrary
of what has been asserted in unpardonably
general terms, and with substantial unan-
imity, by a class of writers unable to free
/ themselves from the bias of some very noble
sentiments, or from adulation of some
eminently respectable men. In this con-
nection it is not necessary to furnish illus-
trations, save as they appear in the order of
events discussed or recorded.

This work purports to be a review of con-
clusions as well as of methods. It is, or
ought to be, a very dear wish of the historian
to make apparent, if true, the right of the
American citizen to say to his boy: **Your
country never fought an unjust nor an

Introduction 9

inglorious war." It may be a more import-
ant matter that the reviewer impeach the
manners and language of the exponents
of the modem school of history, could they
only be persuaded to never indulge in in-
nuendo, never to intimate or imply anything;
but state it in such form that it can be
supported, or overthrown, by the truth.
The style of speech of the frontier guide
and cowboy is commended to their imita-
tion: "He never hints; he either says or^
shuts."

As it is impossible for the most veracious
witness not to give to, no matter how simple,
a portrayal of facts, something of color,
so it is impossible for the best intentioned
and best trained historian or biographer —
or expert with the telescope — ^not to give
something of personal equation to what
he sees, or thinks he sees, and so reports;
and it would be well, could the reader and
student always get behind the printed
page and have some knowledge of the writer
of a history, and so be able to make the
proper discount from the results announced.

For this reason, there is a long credit
mark to be drawn against the name of
James Schouler, in that he offers some /

\

lo The Mexican War

data, however insufficient, for elimination
of any errors, the results of his personal
equation. In his notice, prefixed to volume
iv. of his very valuable History of the United
States,^ he says of himself:

"It is not in my nature to be impartial as
between right and wrong, honorable and
dishonorable public conduct. ... All men
and all political parties, I have constantly
sought to interpret by the atmosphere of
their times."

If Mr. Schouler failed to be impartial also
in discriminating first what was right and
what wrong, what honorable and what
dishonorable, or on what evidence he based
his assertions, it may have been because of
his having placed himself, as well as **all
men and all political parties," at a mistaken
point of view in **the atmosphere of their
times."

The blue light of whig and abolition
defeat was not a colorless medium through
which to see events, any more than was
the red glow of border war and slaveholding
domination, both of which atmospheres
were characteristic of those times. It needs

> History of the United States, vol. iv., James Schouler,
Boston, January i, 1889.

Introduction 1 1

the clearer light of later times for a medium
through which to see historic truth.

As later writers have with great uniformity
not only followed Mr. Schouler almost
blindly, but adopted his language to an extent
which in itself is a proper matter for criti-
cism of them and compliment to him, it is
doubly desirable to be furnished with the
data by which any necessary allowance should
be made for the effects of the atmosphere
in which Mr. Schouler chose his point of
view. It is enough, in this page, to note
that his style of narration and his choice
of epithets are sufficient of themselves to
show that the atmosphere through which he
chose to see the causes of the Mexican War^
was pre-eminently whig.

How greatly mere opinion, at one date or
another, has been made to color alleged his-
tory of the Mexican War, appears almost
humorously from the pages of no less a writer
than James Ford Rhodes, to whom the
public is indebted for so much really good
work. Among the sources or authorities
he cites to justify his condemnation of the
Mexican War, are earlier opinions by no
means so valuable or well-trained as his
own: the opinion of General Grant (by his

12 The Mexican War

own description an irreconcilable whig, and
too overwhelmed with the executive work
of a life of almost unexampled activity to have
studied any debatable public events not
coupled with his own performance) ; the
opinion of some fictitious characters in
James Russell Lowell's Biglqw Papers, in
which the poet satirized the National armies
and their objects in terms so opprobriously,
as well as wittily, discouraging of enlist-
ments that, if employed in 1862 by one op-
posing the far greater and higher cause which
was then the Nation's — a cause greater and
higher perhaps than any other that any
nation ever espoused — they would have
probably prompted Lowell himself to de-
mand the author's imprisonment in Fort
Lafayette. Some men were sent there for
less cause.

Of course it was wise in the forties to let
the poet have his fling; the recruiting sergeant
could keep **eyes front" whoever recited:
Ez fer war I call it murder.

or

You *11 hev to rattle
On them kittle-drums o' youm;

Tain't a knowin' kind o' cattle
Thet is ketched with mouldy com.

Introduction 13

But while there may have been only arro-
gance and not incipient secession in

Massachusetts, God forgive her,
She 's a kneelin' with the rest,

there was assuredly no diploma of Ph.D.
ever awarded to Hosea Biglow, to warrant his
acceptance as an imbiased judge of a hotly
contested case of National honor. Mr. Low-
ell makes Hosea Biglow put the secession
doctrine rather unmistakably:

Eil*dfny way I hed ruther
We should go to work an* part, —
They take one way, we take t'other —
Guess it would n 't break my heart;
Men had ough' to put asunder
Them that God has noways jined;
An* I should n 't gretly wonder
Ef there *s thousands o* my mind;

to which the imaginary reverend editor,
parson Homer Wilbur, adds: The ** first
recruiting sergeant on record I conceive
to have been that individual, who is men-
tioned in the Book of Job as going to and
fro in the earth and walking up and down

in ur

But Mr. Rhodes has a climax of this
sort of proof in store: **Sir Charles Lyell

/

14 The Mexican War

met no one in society who approved the

war.

»» 1

Is it possible that the eminent British
scientist missed an introduction to Caleb
Gushing, or to George Bancroft, 2 or to
any of the party then dominant politi-
cally and socially? Or was it the irrecon-
cilables only who substantiated their claims
to being **in society" by entertaining a dis-
tinguished guest with their version of a
political dissension?

Had Grant's opinion been cited on a ques-
tion of the strategy to be the basis of action
of department commanders, had Lowell's
judgment been given as to the justification
of an ** Americanism" by its use in the poems
of Chaucer or Shakespeare, or had a theory
in geology received Lyell's sanction, it
would have made a reviewer very busy to

> History of the United States, James Ford Rhodes,
New York, 1900, vol. i., p. 88.

2 It was George Bancroft, the historian, who per-
suaded the Massachusetts Democratic Convention to
pronotmce for the annexation of Texas ; and it was his
order as Secretary of War that sent Taylor to the
frontier of Mexico, as near to the Rio Grande as prac-
ticable. — Life and Letters of George Bancroft, MA. De
Wolfe Howe, New York, 1908, vol. i., pp. 287 to 291;
and Executive Documents, ist Session, 30th Congress,
No. 60, p. Si.

Introduction 15

find the testimony on which either of them
could be confuted; for such opinions, if not
logically shifting the burden of proof, would
go very far toward capturing a popular
verdict; and would require something much
more than opposing opinions of less distin-
guished observers to refute them.

But in view of all. that either of Mr.
Rhodes's authorities knew, or was capable
of understanding from the very biased
position in which he made his observations,
Mr. Rhodes might as well have quoted
General Grant's notions of geological periods,
Sir Charles LyelFs ideas of language forma-
tion, or Hosea Biglow's (not Lowell's) views
as to military strategy.

I am most appalled at the necessity of
confronting this opinion of so accurate a
writer as David A. Wells: **For this war
the judgment of all impartial history will
undoubtedly be that there was no justifi-
cation on the part of the United States'';
though he says: **It may be that what
happened was an inevitable outcome of
the law of the survival of the fittest, as"
exemplified among nations," and contrasts
the ** development of California, Texas,
and Colorado with the stagnant, poverty-

r

1 6 The Mexican War

stricken condition of Chihuahua, Sonora,
Coahuila." ^

Mr. Wells does not, however, examine
into the causes of the war. The only evi-
dence he gives of its wrongfulness is that
there is a monument at Chapultepec to the
Mexican Cadets, who well deserved that
honor, and the bravery of the undisciplined
/Mexican troops, which there is no object
in disputing. Furthermore Mr. Wells fur-
nishes indisputable authority — to be cited
later — of a condition in Mexican affairs
which goes far to eliminate criticisms on any
interference with them whatever, in view of
his descriptions of the victims of peonage.

To have recognized the desirability of
knowing the personal point of view from
which others write, makes it almost a matter
of good faith to disclose whatever might color
the medium through which I have observed
events and looked for historic data while pre-
paring this volume. It is not fair to throw
stones without setting up a glass house.

My earliest recollection of anything akin
to politics, is of receiving my father's assist-
ance in constructing a Polk and Dallas flag;

» A Study of Mexico f David A. Wells, New York,
1887, pp. 70 and 71.

Introduction 17

but as I was at the date of Polk's election
only six years old, and my father was an
early Free-soiler, I am unable to trace any
political bias to the circumstance. I wa^
later an employee of the "tmderground
railroad," and was guilty of so much breach
of legal and constitutional observance as
to have occasionally found the way through
an tmfrequented tract of wood and brush-
pasture for a few persons who with great
imanimity were curious to know "Which
way is Nothe?" and were uniformly of dark
complexion. We were invariably met at
nearly the same spot by, so far as I could
distinguish in the dusk, the same man, whose
general appearance had been previously
described to me, and to whom they repeated
the question: ** Which way is Nothe?" My
intellectual development at that period had
not been so scanted in the absorption of the
frontier novel that I did not begin to plume
myself at being engaged in an occupation
in which a signal or a pass- word seemed to
be an essential. But although I have been
a practising lawyer, schooled by Joel Parker
and Emory Washburn, and have asked myself
the question, I was and am unable to perceive
any obligation to ascertain a stranger's pedi-

1 8 The Mexican War

gree or his profession,before answering a polite
inquiry about the indications of the compass.
At a very early period my father had
impressed upon me, by the good old Puritan
method, the advisability of keeping my
mouth shut as to matters of other people's
business; and when it became evident that
I had (and have until this writing) restrained
my impulses to boast of my dark deeds of the
night, I was trusted as an errand boy of
Senator Francis Gillette; Gideon Welles;
Joseph R. Hawley; Charles Dudley Warner;
the Connecticut war governor, William A.
Buckingham; James Wolfe Ripley, U. S. A.,
Inspector General of Department of New
England; John M. Niles; and, later, for
isolated occasions, by Governor Morgan of
New York, and General C. C. Augur, U. S. A.,
commanding Department of Washington.
I was also a voltmteer, and after a time a
commissioned aide-de-camp (which I found
to be a more dignified name for errand boy)
for General Robert O. Tyler, U. S. A., from
the days of his independent command at
Fairfax to Spottsylvania with the Fourth
Division, Second Corps — Haacock's — ^which
for a few days indulged in the anomaly of
four divisions; and to Cold Harbor, where

Introduction 19

I got my discharge and exemption together.
I worked for Fremont, voted for Lincohi and
Grant — twice each, and for several more
Republican presidents.

I recognize nothing in my personal ex-
periences which would tend to pervert one
to an imdue liking for the ways of the slave-
holders, or to influence the acceptance ' of
evidence of the failures or successes of
National administrations, unless it be a
strong impression made by General Hawley's
repeated expression: '* Uncle Sam is a gentle-
man."

Perhaps, though, it is only just to add
that nobody who has not been a pensioner
of the United States and, with his own
wounds cared for by his country, seen
veterans of Wellington by Nelson's Monu-
ment or survivors of Austerlitz by the
H6tel des Invalides holding out braided caps
for alms, can fully feel how grand a gentle-
man is Uncle Sam, or understand what should
be the glow of indignation with which an
American could hear him maligned. Only
when anything said against him is proved can
it be received in silence — ^and with sadness.

CHAPTER I

NILES' OPINION

THE analysis of the atmosphere througn
which the material for this review
has been observed, may have passed too
far the verge of the autobiographical; but
it ought to clear the reviewer from the sus-
picion of uncontrollable bias for the methods
of the slavocracy; and it may serve for the
introduction of a man who, in the compari-
sons of opinions of the Mexican War, should
have the casting vote, and from whose printed
accounts of facts the pages of this volume
borrow much.

Opinions of any date are not conclusive.
It is the main object of this review to protest
against taking opinions, as controlling evi-
dence. But it may help a reader in accepting
such protest, in a receptive frame of mind,
to exhibit the fact that the opinions of
men of the time were not unanimous in

22 The Mexican War

condemning the Mexican War, as a dis-
grace.

Tohn Milton Nile s affected no graces of ora-
tory. He had not the natural advantage
of the ** God-like presence," which it was the
fashion of that day to extol in this or that
idol of the popular homage — a, fashion that
it is the pernicious habit of present-day
biographers to imitate, to the confusion of
their sense of proportion and the unbalancing
of the scales in which they weigh evidence.

None the less he was the peer of Webster,
Clay, Calhoun, and Benton; and a country
would be safer and more wisely led by the
perfect integrity and common sense of such
Senators as he, than by those who waged the
wordy **wars of the giants."

I remember him as an undersized, some-
what withered, keen-eyed old man, a little
stooped or sloping-shouldered, with a pene-
trating rather than a powerful voice, a
crisp enunciation, rapid and forcible yet
deliberate utterance, almost without any
figures of speech, save those of Whittier's
Abraham Davenport — the Ten Arab Signs;
with statistics and facts in full command;
his reasoning irresistible, and simple enough
for public understanding.

Niles' Opinion 23

His favorite, so far as I can recollect,
his only, gesture was to plunge both hands
almost to the elbows into the side pockets
of a long, loose, bottle-green sack coat — from
either of which pockets he could produce a
pinch of snuff.

He was not an orator, unless, as a reasoner,
in something the same way that Lincoln
was, but he was that much greater and more
instructive force in a republic, — an unex-
celled, even in the Senate of that day, an al-
most unrivalled, debater. I knew him best
in his pear garden, where he was an expert.

He was bom in Windsor, Connecticut, in
1787. Too poor to obtain a college training,
he gothis legal education by work in a lawyer's
office, and began practice at the Hartford
bar in 181 7. In the same year he established
the Hartford Times, for now almost a
century a leading democratic paper of the
State. In 1820 he was made Judge of the
county court, in 1829 postmaster. From
December 31, 1835, ^ March 3, 1839,
he was United States Senator by appoint-
ment, and from December 4, 1843, to March
3, 1849, by election. From May 19, 1840,
to March 6, 1841, he was Postmaster General
of the United States. Appointed at a time

24 The Mexican War

when the Department was laboring under
serious embarrassments, he introduced the
great reforms of reduced postage and increased
mail facilities which, as he had boldly and
wisely predicted, resulted in increased reve-
nue. He was the pioneer of the present
liberal postal system.

Opposed to a national bank as a centraliz-
ing force incompatible with his democratic
principles, he was even more - strenuously
opposed to extension of slavery, which he
fought against within party limits as long
as there remained hope of success; then
broke with his party, to which he had been
a stout but unhaltered adherent; founded
The Press in 1856, the Free-soil paper of
Gideon Welles, Joseph R. Hawley, and
Charles Dudley Warner; and made his last
public appearance at the Connecticut State
Republican Convention in the same year.

Of his fitness to judge the principal National
event of his day one may learn some-
thing from the estimates put upon him by
most distinguished associates of his public
labors.

His was the most ready and accurately dis-
criminating mind in the Senate.

John C. Calhoun.

Niles' Opinion 25

Not only were his opinions eminently sotrnd
and correct, but his political and moral courage
exceeded that of his associates.

Thomas H. Benton.

I always distrusted the accuracy of my
own conclusions when they differed from
Senator Niles's.

Silas Wright.

Niles spoke as Franklin wrote.

Martin Van Buren.

His marked traits were good, practical com-
mon sense without pretension, unassumingly
but honestly and fearlessly expressed.

Gideon Welles. ^

It is a curious character study to note
how each of these most distinguished men
assigns Judge Niles to the front rank in the
qualifications for which he was himself
conspicuous.

The general fitness of such a man for
judgment of the current events of his day
had been especially trained for discriminating
as to Mexican affairs. Not only as a journal-
ist, a Senator, and a cabinet officer had the

« History of Ancient Windsor, Henry R. Stiles, Hart-
ford, 1859, vol. ii., p. 725. Note by Gideon Welles is
full authority for all statements herein as to Senator
Niles.

26 The Mexican War

details of public life been familiar to him, but,
among other books and pamphlets he had
published was Niles' Civil Officer, which for
half a century was, and, with modem
statute adaptations, still is, the authority
for the Connecticut sheriff or magistrate,
covering a branch of legal knowledge in which
absolute accuracy must go hand in hand
with appreciation of individual rights and
the foundation principles of good government
in their most practical and frequent appli-
cations.

Of more consequence to the present
discussion, he had published a history of the
Spanish American governments, including
Mexico, with a short history of Texas, cred-
ited to his brother-in-law, L. T. Pease.
What was his feeling and spirit of appreciation
for these neighbors, let his own writings
manifest.

After recording the Mexican revolution
and constitution of 1824, he closes his history
for the time in these words:

It is no longer prophecy to say that the time
is not far distant when there will be two great
republics in North America, each uniting
numerous subordinate republics, and possessing
a vast population free and enlightened, enjoying

Niles' Opinion 27

all the blessings of liberty and republican
institutions. ^

After Bustamente's rebellion had ended
in a bloody dictatorship, he resumes:

After a contrast so unfavorable to the char-
acter of the Mexican people, if the reader finds
himself compelled to surrender the hopes which
he had cherished in their behalf, however
painful he may find the sacrifice, let him be as-
sured that it was no less painful to the historian,
and that truth alone could have forced him to
make it. ^

And of the ''presidency" in 1835 of Santa
Anna, he adds:

Congress proceeded to abolish the constitution
of 1824, abolishing at the same time all the state
constitutions and state authorities.^

It is difficult to imagine a man more fit
iir^i848 to form a deliberate and intelligent
judgment upon this subject, or more abso-
lutely to be relied on for an honest and
fearless one, than Senator Niles. In a
speech upon the question of a reduction

> History of South America and Mexico, Hon. John
M. Niles, Hartford, 1837, p. 191.

2 Ibid., p. 202. » Ibid., p. 205.

28 The Mexican War

of forces in Mexico,* just a week after the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had been
signed, and California and Texas ceded to
the United States, he gave that opinion
formally. He declared that he ** had reluc-
tantly voted for annexation":

Not that I doubted the right so far as Mexico
was concerned to receive Texas into this Union,
but my difficulties arose from the form of the
proceedings, from constitutional scruples, from
apprehensions of trouble with Mexico, and an
unwillingness to deliver up the whole of the
country to slavery.

We stand well in relation to this war before
the world and have nothing to fear from the
impartial judgment of posterity. It was just
in its commencement, it has been prosecuted
with signal success, and it now only remains
that we bring it to its close in a manner equally
consistent with our national rights and honor,
and a just regard to the interests of htmianity.

That the final settlement by which we
retained Texas to the Rio Grande, California,
and New Mexico, seemed just to Senator
Niles, appears from his vote March 7, 1848,
in favor of **the ten-regiment bill," which
provided for equipment of a force to hold

» Senate, 30th Congress, February 9, 1848.

Niles' Opinion 29

that territory; and from his speech of the
preceding 9th of February, in which he re-
gretted "reference to manifest destiny or
Anglo-Saxon blood, as if we were to tread /
in the footsteps of our savage ancestors";
and opposed maintaining all the posts then
occupied in Mexico, which would have
taken all her territory. " Does the Military
Committee desire to make an India of Mexico
and send some Warren Hastings there whose
financial abilities would be only second to his
rapacity?" It was due to the influence of
the comparatively temperate counsels and
appeals of Senator Niles and such as he, that
Mexican autonomy was not totally extin-
guished in 1848.

CHAPTER II

CHARACTER IS EVIDENCE

A

READER should not need to be told
that opinions, of any date and from
however competent or unbiased judges, are
not to be taken as by any means conclusive.
History must be almost altogether a record
of facts — national advance and, as Taine
y says, **the previous efforts of men" are facts.
By no statement of opinion is it here purposed
to enlist the sympathy or to bias the judg-
ment; but to clear away in some degree the
smoke of partisan-prompted volley-firing,
and induce a fair consideration of facts, by
having exhibited that opinions are not so
altogether unanimous as to render examina-
tion of their foimdations necessarily unpro-
fitable or hopeless. It is to be remembered
that the election of Polk probably exhibited
that the majority of the people of the United
30

Character is Evidence 31

States favored the annexation of Texas. /
And afterward that people enthusiastically
sustained the war.

If some patience is demanded of a reader
and the tale seems long, of so comparatively
brief an episode in the march of a nation's
greatness, it must be remembered that in
the field of Mexican affairs, for more than
one generation nearly every new historian
or biographer has searched for some new
matter of indictment to give original bitter-
ness to his charges; and it is a long process to
answer even the most objectionable errors.

Moreover, the importance of the subject
is not measurable by the lapse of years in our /-•
differences with Mexico; the question is of
our honorable title to the largest territorial
accession ever made by the nation, to an /
area exceeding even that of the Louisiana
purchase.^ And the defence of Uncle Sam
will not ask for anything like the space or time
which has been accorded to the prosecution.

Trial of fact before the great tribunal of
public opinion must have much analogy
to ancient trial by jury, a jury of peers of
the accused, a jury of the vicinage. Whether

> For comparison of areas see Conquest of the South-
west.CyTVLS Townsend Brady, New York, 1905, p. 256,

32 The Mexican War

the infringement of modem practice be for
better or worse in reqtiiring of a juryman
almost entire ignorance of the parties as
well as fairness of intention, it is unquestion-
ably a departure from the earlier law and
its intent. The insistence on a jury of one's
peers and of the vicinage was deliberately
designed to make it easy for triers to take
into consideration the character of the
parties — easy and intimate — because of their
personal knowledge of their neighbors and
associates. By statutes providing for the
punishment of habitual criminals, by im-
peachment of witnesses on evidence solely
of ''general reputation as to truth and
veracity," by increased penalties for re-
peated offences, and remarks of police judges:

citing figures of John H. Ficklin, Acting Commissioner
U. S. Land Office:

Area of Texas 389,795 sq. miles.

" ceded 53o.o49

Gadsden purchase 29,964 "

Total 949,808

Area taken by Louisiana

purchase 825,715 sq. miles.

To balance 124,093 "

Total 949,808

Character is Evidence 33

*'I have seen you here too often," it is ob-
vious that modem trials do not fail to make
character a weighty presumption.

It is not to be denied that in the deter-
minations of public opinion general character
goes far, and ought to go very far, toward
making people incredulous of charges of
baseness made against men of honorable
repute. It would do no hurt to life in
civilized lands, were slander and libel met
with greater incredulity.

No apology is due, therefore, for some
inquiry as to the character of the **wol,J/^
and the lamb," as the United States of
America and the United States of Mexico,
of the forties, are designated by the average
historian and biographer in description of
those times, and of the dissensions between
the great Republic and that other allege^/
** sister republic." ^

» Many writers follow Schouler, apparent?y with
school-boy glee, m adapting the well-worn JEsop fable
for application to our Mexican relations; although
Schouler says in one place that Mexico was the lamb,
and in another (History of the United States, James
Schouler, Boston, 1889., vol. iv., p. 519) that she " was
not the lamb dumb before her shearers. 11
3

CHAPTER III

THE WOLF

V

^HE general character of the American
people will receive short comment in
this necessarily limited review. President
Roosevelt is quoted for authority that west-
em settlers were believers in that ** manifest
^/ destiny," allusion to which Niles and Benton
deprecated in the Senate.

But the piety of the controlling minds in
these colonies gave lasting respect for good
conduct and honorable dealing; and the
institutions, governmental and educational,
which they at once put in force, were not
such as to cultivate greed, insolence, or bad
fellowship. Since 1638 and the adoption in
Connecticut of the first written constitution,
manhood suffrage and representative dem-
ocracy, to be followed soon and logically
by practical religious independence, have

34

The Wolf 35

furnished the precedents on which progress
in all humane and civilized governments
has been guided; while, dating only from the
National Constitution of 1787, our Govern-
ment has maintained a normal outgrowth
of its institutions long enough to have become
the oldest of the civilized governments under
one fundamental law.

Free institutions naturally lead, through
appreciation of peoples, to kindly foreign
relations.

When kings and nobles governed, their sym-
pathies were with crowned heads; when the
people were admitted to a share in the govern-
ment (in 1832), England favored constitutional
freedom in other states, and became the idol
of every nation which cherished the same
aspirations as herself.^

Limited as has been the share of her
people in the government of England, and
controllable as is the idolatry of her in other
nations, there can be little question that
May announces a correct principle, and that
it was to have been anticipated that the
foreign relations of the United States, how-

* The Constitutional History of England, Thomas
Erskine May, C.B., Boston, 1863, vol. ii., p. 577.

/

36 The Mexican War

ever informally conducted, should have been
on the whole singularly peaceful and friendly
' — as has proved to be the fact.

It has frequently been sought to make an
exception of Indian affairs, and with too
much reason.

But for occasional occurrences on what
was for a long time an almost inaccessible
border, a central government cannot be held
to severe responsibility, nor for the outbreaks
of hostility of savages. There were failures
necessarily in disciplining remote offenders,
and mistakes in the appointments of agents
who too often proved lax or corruptible.

High official action and policy, however,
such as is properly classed as national, has
been, even in Indian affairs, for the most
part commendable.

It was a mistake, perhaps, to have rec-
ognized at all the tribal relations, and to
have entered into treaty with native coteries
which had not sufficient organization or
cohesion to compel the observance of treaty
stipulations by their own tribesmen or by
trespassers from adjacent tribes.

But this mistake, if it were one, was made
in the honorable attempt to acknowledge
the rights of the ignorant and the vanquished ;

The Wolf 37

and was in admirable contrast to the manner
in which most of the territory of savages had
been acquired by other civilized nations,
from Palestine to Peru.

There was also the almost tmique credit
to be given to the Nation, to the States it
embraced and to the colonies which created
them, that they took the lands they occupied
only by purchase from the aborigines or as the
•prize of defensive wars waged with no limit
but annihilation.^

Nomads set no mere-stones, and keep no
records of surveyed and definite boundaries.
Mistmderstandings were almost unavoidable
as to land titles, even between the original,
parties to transactions of purchase and sale.-
This was especially true of Mexican grants,
and produced many of the questions of bound-
ary and rights of exploration which became

> "The settlers of New England had paid for their
lands in every case except that of the Pequods." —
The Fall of New France: Essays Historical and Literary,
John Fiske, New York, 1902, vol. ii., p. 95. "It was
the invariable custom of European settlers on the
Atlantic coast to purchase the lands on which they
settled, and the transaction was usually recorded in a
deed to which the Sagamores set their marks." — ^John
Fiske in Atlantic Monthly and New France and New
England, pp. 237 and 238. See also various town
records.

38 The Mexican War

embarrassing later. There were also inter-
tribal feuds, and irreconcilable claims ante-
dating the coming of the white man to
American shores.

If a Huron's father had htmted or fished in
a region, he claimed that region as his hunting
grounds, whatever other tribe might have
possessed or sold it. If it brought a good
price, he would be the surer to claim it.

And his first notice of an action of eject-
ment against settlers was quite likely to be
the tomahawking and scalping of women and
children, or at least the firing of bams and
dwellings.

So that frequent border battles were un-
avoidable by the most peace-loving pilgrims.

It is difficult for the dweller in the ease of
our modem opulence, with its especial
dislike of sins of violence, to put himself
in the place of a soldier on scout duty, or of
a borderer of the wilderness.

It shows in the aggregate an exceptionally
honorable people, that never has a native
tribe been forced away from its inhabited
possessions but after our government had
been made to believe that it had by arson and
murder, secret or avowed, made its neigh-
borhood in the highest degree undesirable

The Wolf 39

if not impossible; and even then it was paid
for its lands at what was regarded — ^per-
haps by prejudiced appraisers — Si reasonable
valuation.

There have been many and just regrets that
more friendly relations have not been uni-
formly maintained with our neighbors on
the north of the great lakes and rivers. But
when the ambitious character is considered
of two enterprising populations, each having
savage dependents, in juxtaposition across
an imaginary line — the longest international
boimdary in the world, and in many places
remote from either centre of control — there
remains cause for congratulation and ad-
miration of the mannerly respect for mutual
rights manifested on either side of the line.

The history of American diplomacy is a
record of just, frank, and friendly dealing
with other powers to such extent that,
to-day, the methods of Franklin are said to
have become quite the fashion of the civilized
nations, whose chiefs also now talk with
each other by telegraph instead of by the
mouths of ambitious functionaries.

The history of our foreign relations is of
some five or ten years of war in a century
and a quarter — ^three or four wars, the

40 The Mexican War

humbling of Barbary and Chinese pirates,
and a few Indian policing campaigns, as
compared with, for instance. Great Britain's
twenty-six wars, with rarely a peaceful year,
during the single reign of Victoria.

Our position, among the nations, is rec-
ognized as one of friendliness to all men,
with a strong penchant for minding our
own business and desiring that others shall
do the same, especially as to American
republics.

The condemnation of the Mexican War, by
our historians, is itself evidence of tenderer
conscience than is common to ambitious t
peoples; and when Dr. Brady adds to the
stock phrases: "spoliation of a weaker
power" and "no truly patriotic citizen can
think of it without a sense of shame," it is
" the one serious blot on our national history,"
— or as one would say in a police court: " it
is his first offence" — ^he strongly endorses
the general good character of the wolf — that
wolf which in international relations stands
at the head of all stipulators for free high-
way over the seas and the rights of neutrals.
First to extend (at Stony Point) the privi-
leges of prisoners of war to a garrison taken
by assault and in the night. First to give

The Wolf 41

universal amnesty to conquered rebels what-
ever their mistake. First in all advocacy of
arbitration to take the place of war. And,
in the very case in question, submitting to
arbitration claims against Mexico for destruc-
tion or confiscation of the property of Ameri-
can merchants and the imprisonment and'
murder of American citizens.

CHAPTER IV

THE WOLF S CUB

TEXAS was a legitimate chUd of the
United States and one to be almost
unqualifiedly proud of. She followed closely
the parent traditions of peaceful settlement
manfully defended. It has not seemed so to
all historians. The Texans have been de-
scribed as ** hardy adventurers from our
southwestern States, who, despite the fact
that Mexico had abolished slavery, by
presidential decree, took their slaves with
them"^; although people of the character-
istic colony settled under express guarantees
of protection and disclaimed a spirit of
adventure 2; many settlers came from the

> History of the United States, James Ford Rhodes,
New York, 1900, vol. i., pp. 70 and 88.

'Speech of Stephen F. Austin, Lrouisville, Ky.,
March 7, 1836. History of South America and Mexico ^

4a

The Wolfs Cub 43

Atlantic States, notably the famous scout,
Deaf Smith, from New York, the diplomat
Ashbel Smith and the Austins originally
from Connecticut; and several of the leaders
were from "the mouldering State of Vir-
ginia," ^ as Schouler describes the State
which he invaded with the 3d Mass.

The presidential decree abolishing slavery'
in Mexico was of doubtful validity. 2 It'
not only exceeded the powers of the President,
but the Texans were at once notified that
the order did not apply to Texas ^ (the only
part of Mexico in which there were slaves).

They had taken their few slaves and family
servants with them before the decree was

J. M. Niles, Hartford, 1838, vol. ii., p. 270 and infra
pp. 96-7-

> History of the United States, James Schouler, Bos-
ton, 1889, vol. iv., p. 455.

2 Niles, vol. i., p. 199.

a "On September 15, 1829, Guerrero, then the Presi-
dent or Dictator, published a decree abolishing slavery
in the territory of the Mexican Republic, which was
immediately ratified by the Congress then in session.
The Texans protested against this decree, and, in conse-
quence, the Department of Texas was exempted from
its operation on December 2, 1829. . . . All the
enactments regarding slavery were aimed at Texas, in-
asmuch as the only slavery in Mexico existed in Texas
among the American colonists. — "Conquest of the South-
west, Cyrus Townsend Brady, New York, 1905, p. 33.

44 The Mexican War

issued, and not only by the permission of the
Mexican authorities, but by such a standing
invitation incorporated in the organic law
as conferred a bonus of eighty acres of land
for each slave imported by the settlers.^ .

Another version of the origin of Texas is:
"Mexico emancipated her slaves in 1827,
but her northern province, Texas, refused
to do so, and soon after revolted under the
leadership of Sam Houston,*' 2 — ^who did
not lead tmtil the revolution was complete,
and indeed there was no revolution — but a
strict defence of vested rights.

Goldwin Smith says: ** Houston, an Ameri-
can filibuster, an old comrade of Jackson,
with a body of intrusive Americans" [he
went alone] ** had planted himself in Texas,
which belonged to the Republic of Mexico," 3

^History of the Pacific States of North America,
Hubert Howe Bancroft, 34 vols., San Francisco, 1882-
1890, vol. xvi., p. 60, citing White's Colonial Laws, vol.
i., pp. 586 and 587.

2 History of the United StcUes, Henry William Elson,
New York, 1904, pp. 496 and 497.

Life of Henry Clay, Carl Schurz, 2 vols., Boston, 1887,
vol. ii., p. 87.

3 The United States, Goldwin Smith, D.C.L., New
York, 1893, p. 209.

The Wolfs Cub 45

nation which **was never a republic
in the Saxon interpretation of the word,*'^ /
and against which Houston offered no violence
until in a strictly defensive war he obeyed
the orders of the only government of any
sort in Texas, as the chosen commander of
its army. Both these and other writers, not-
ably Sumner,^ make President Andrew Jack-
son a probable conspirator with Houston.^
Professor Sumner, generally very outspoken,
adopts the style of history by innuendo.
**That Jackson did connive at an enterprise
of Houston, his Florida companion-in-arms, y
for revolutionizing Texas ** he is frank enough '
to say ** cannot be established by proof, but
is sustained by very strong inference.*'
Sumner shows himself capable of that very
strong inference. He acknowledges indebt-
edness to a ** Dr. Mayo, a hanger-on in
Washington, for a little book in which
most of the Texan intrigue is laid bare."
" Mayo was in the way of picking up certain

» The United States, Edwin Earle Sparks, New York,
1904, part ii., p. 130.

2 Andrew Jackson, William Graham Sumner, Boston,
1882, p. 354.

» Rhodes quotes Schouler, vol. iv., p. 251, who quotes
John Quincy Adams* opinion.

46 The Mexican War

information, and more came to him by
accident." Of course as Sumner concedes
that there was no proof of even connivance,
whatever that may be, at revolutionizing
Texas, which, as the government of that
cotmtry was in decadence, would have been
in one sense eminently desirable and proper,
"certain information" must be interpreted
to mean "information of a certain sort."
And that always means the reverse of in-
formation which is certain in the sense of
trustworthy. And whether Dr. Mayo was
"in the way of picking it up" through
keyholes, or it "came to him by accident"
over transoms, is not stated.

Sam Houston, as he always called himself,
was not a temperate man in any position
except in command of troops, where he
assuredly kept his head and was never
criticised for lack of prudence. It may
be that such a picker-up of information
as Dr. Mayo, was intimate with him, in his
own opinion; or even may have heard
some boastful speech of the old hero, who
in fact had been a brave and reliable ** com-
panion in arms" of the President in his
Florida campaign; but there is no probability
that Houston was ever intimate with Mayo,

The Wolfs Cub 47

and Sumner's intrcxiuction does not tend
to give weight to Mayo's testimony. The
only evidence worthy of consideration, which
indicates that Jackson lent aid to Texan
independence is the fact that in a later ad-
ministration many armed men, and a few
organized military companies, went from the
United States into Texas and joined the
Texan forces after they were at war with
savages. Any ** strong inference*' to be
made from the ordering of General Gaines
to the Sabine belongs to another chapter.
That order, too, was eminently proper, by
reason of conditions to be exhibited in their
place.

Yet Sumner so vindictively pursues Jack-
son through three administrations as to
charge that: **The Texan intrigue and
the Mexican War were full of Jacksonian acts
and principles. . . . The army and
navy were corrupted by swagger and insub-
ordination and by the anxiety of the officers
to win popularity by the methods of which
Jackson had set the example."^ For this
insult to the diplomatic, military, and naval
service of the cotmtry, Sumner cites not a

^Andrew Jackson, Wm. Graham Sumner, Boston,
1882, pp. 35^9-

48 The Mexican War

single authority, and gives but a single
instance — ^that which he stigmatizes as
**Commcxiore Porter's outrage at Foxardo,
Porto Rico, for which he was cashiered in
1824,'' a generation before the Mexican War.

David Porter was suspended from com-
mand six months for having resented, the
government thought too hotly, an insult to
his flag.

The one irresistible answer to any attack
upon either American war service is the
record of the campaigns of Scott and Taylor
and Kearney and their Naval supports;
but words also confront Sumner of the
highest authorities. **A more efficient army
for its number and armament I do not
believe ever fought a battle than the one
commanded by General Taylor in his first
two engagements on Mexican (or Texan)
soil.^'i

** Rarely if ever was there a better disci-
plined or a more thoroughly instructed little
army than the one commanded by General
Taylor. "2

> Personal Memoirs of U. S, Grant, New York, 1895,
vol. i., p. 44, note.

2 History of the Mexican War, General Cadmus M.
Wilcox, Washington, 1892, p. 34.

The Wolfs Cub 49

It shotdd be remembered that the first
railroads were built during Jackson's ad-
ministration, and that the telegraph was not
made practicable by the Morse invention
until 1844, so that no foreign enlistment act,
however strict, could have been enforced in
territorial dimensions such as were those of
the United States, and upon a people whose
sympathies and passions were greatly roused.
Before an order from Washington could
reach their neighborhood volunteers would
be across the border. Yet from this period
there began the pursuance of what Ladd,
with philosophic discrimination, character-
izes as a ** double policy.*' ^ The endeavor
was made to conciliate Northern anti-
slavery elements by soft words to Mexico,
while urging a purchase of a portion of her
territory and claims of indemnity for breaches
of international obligation, which had South-
em approval.

Anything like inconsistency and double
policy has always an tmdignified look, and
for so much the domestic politics of the day
are open to criticism. It does not follow
therefrom that there was any ground for

* History of the War with Mexico, Horatio O. Ladd,
New York, 1883, p. 35.

4

5o The Mexican War

complaint, to adopt Judge Niles's language,
** so far as Mexico was concerned.'*

Discrimination between an unwise foreign
policy and an unjust one was something
of which few other than Niles seem to have
been capable amid the passions of his day;
but it is surely time for historians to recognize
that what might be inconvenient for the
republic might not necessarily be a crime
against its neighbor, and that an undignified
trimming to political breezes at home gave
no proof that the batteries of the ship of state
were being trained on an innocent adversary
abroad.^

It is sad that one so capable of historic
discrimination as to have pointed out the
'* double policy" of administrations should
fall into so gross error as does Mr. Ladd
in his estimate of Texan character. Con-
demning the war as a pro-slavery measure,
he justly records that **such tragedies as
those of Goliad and the Alamo gave to
Mexican character a most hateful repu-
tation in the United States; but" (he con-

» "The right of the war was altogether a different
thing from the expediency of it." — Letters and Times
of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Richmond, 1885,
vol. ii., p. 444.

The Wolfs Cub 51

eludes) "there was little difference in this
respect between the rough, border Texans
of those days and their Mexican neigh-
bors." 1

For this censure on the early Texans, Mr.
Ladd quotes not a line of authority, nor
points out a single instance of Texan breach
of rules of honorable warfare. Indeed, he
cites no authorities for any of his statements.
And the fairly careful reader of any of the
accounts of border warfare in Texas would
be tempted to denounce the author of such a
slur, as either unpardonably ignorant of the
matter, or incapable of discerning more than
a ** little difference*' between paroling prison-
ers of war and murdering them, and giv-
ing to slaughter and ravage women and
children.

But there has been some natural confusion
as to the character of Texan settlements.
In the efforts made by Spain to establish
her right to a northerly boundary on the
Sabine or the Mississippi, early colonies were
planted between the Rio Grande and the
Sabine, and the district called New Philip-
pines, most of the settlers being from the

> History of the War with Mexico, Horatio O. Ladd,
New York, 1883, p. 34.

52 The Mexican War

Philippine Islands.* These were failures,
and their total population had shrunk to
about four thousand. ^ General Grant says
that in Taylor's march to the Rio Grande:
**No inhabitants were found until about
thirty miles from San Antonio; some were
living under groimd for fear of the Indians.** ^
At San Antonio, in 1813, out of two thousand
five htmdred Americans and Texans all but
about one hundred were slain and seven
hundred peaceable inhabitants murdered.
Yoakum places a thousand pirates on Gal-
veston Island as early as 181 7. There seems
to be no denial that Lafitte had some of
his men in Jackson's lines at New Orleans,
whether from Galveston or Barataria.

There had been some strength added to
filibustering expeditions by these island
pirates. General Mina, son of the distin-
guished leader General Mina of the Constitu-
tional Cause in Spain, was joined by Aury

« Note, Report of Com, of Investigation , sent by Mexi-
can Government, New York, 1875, p. 318.

2 The total population of Texas in 1834 by the official
report of Col. Juan Almonte to the Mexican Govern-
ment was 21,000 whites and 15,300 Indians, although,
according to Williams, "this estimate of the Indian
population was the sheerest guesswork."

» Memoirs of U, S. Grant, vol. i., p. 48.

The Wolfs Cub 53

and reinforced the ** Independents" in the
splendid but disastrous attempt to displace
the Mexican Dictator Teran in 18 16. This
was more nearly foundation for a charge
against the United States of favoring fili-
busters than any later event. Mina ** ob-
tained some officers and additional muskets
and some pecuniary aid from Baltimore
and New Orleans," but as the occurrence
was under Madison, President, and Monroe,
Secretary, it has not been made prominent in
the impeachment of Texas.

There had been similar unsuccessful little
expeditions into Texas. These had no per-
manent effect on Texas any more than did the
piratical establishments at Barataria upon
Louisiana. Nor was the settlement at Nacog-
doches of any influence in the eventual
formation of Texan character, unless in
inspiring the Spanish residents with love
of liberty.

Early boundary disputes had given to a
tract of land east of the Sabine near Natchi-
toches, in Louisiana, the title **the neutral
grotmd." After the treaty of 1819 (which
made the Sabine the boundary) this tract was
subject to the United States. Neither the
United States, Spain, nor Mexico had exer-

y

54 The Mexican War

cised anything like a decent jurisdiction over
it; and it had been a resort of ruined despera-
^' does, escaped convicts and fugitives from jus-
tice — ^perhaps most of them from the United
States, as Mexico furnished other places for
such riff-raff, often places of official distinc-
tion. After 1819 the territory was soon re-
duced to reasonable order. Localities which
are not subject to liberal extradition laws and
practice are very liable to abuse of hospitality ;
and *'Gone to Texas*' at a very early date
acquired as uncomplimentary construction
as was afterward coupled with *'Gone to
Canada,*' a phrase which has never been
advanced as a serious impeachment of
Canadian character.

Disputes over land titles, always rife under
Spanish or Mexican grants — for failure of
title meant reversion to the crown, or, worse,
to the crown's vice-regents^ — culminated in
the * * Fredonian war, ' ' in which * * the outlaws * '
under Hayden Edwards were easily sup-
pressed, the colonists under Austin taking
part with the Mexican authorities such as
they were. The only important event was
the sparing from slaughter of prisoners of

> Niles. vol. i., p. 65.

The Wolfs Cub ss

war — on Austin's insistence. This was an
innovation.^

Refugees from justice or "intrusive Ameri-
cans" had no association with Houston
and probably furnished no greater proportion
of population to Texas than convicts to
early Virginia or Australia, or perhaps ever^
to New England; and they had no shard
in Texan government until after the popu-
lation of Nacogdoches had been greatly modi- /
fied in its quality by later settlements, when
that locality was represented in Texan
legislatures and conventions.

There was, however, a later and unique
class of adventurers who came to Texas
not as settlers, and who made a lasting
impress on her destinies, although their lives
there were mostly short and their descendants
few.

After it became apparent that the infant
settlements of the Brazos were to be set in
battle against pitiless Mexican and Indian
hordes, there joined the Texan standards a
few hundred recruits from many parts of

> "At the instance of Austin the Mexicans released
the few prisoners taken, doing them no harm — the one
case of such clemency on record." — The Conquest of
the Souihwesty Cyrus Townsend Brady, New York,
1905. P- 35-

56 The Mexican War

the United States, friends and relatives of,
or sympathizers with, the imperilled colonists.
The larger part of these were probably of
slaveholding proclivities, though they brought
no slaves with them. The eagerness of their
muster and the supreme devotion with which
they laid down their lives mark the in-
spiration of a noble motive, and enforce the
belief that political or economic impulses were
less their passion than love of kindred and
joy of battle for unpolluted homes. Joy of
battle simply may have been the motive
of some of them. There is a gaudium cer-
taminis. Yet the rudest of these recruits
was much like the knight-errant of mediaeval
guests. The coonskin cap had replaced
the helmet; an eagle feather, the golden dra-
gon or other armorial crest; lance and shield
had given place to the deadlier armament of
hunting-knife and rifle.

Others were in the uniform of hastily im-
provised military companies. They had
their code of honor, no less obligatory than
that of Malta or the Temple, and no less
commendable. Whatever other laxities were
permissible, lying and cowardice were not.
What they reported is true as they saw it.

Their skill and valor made them as formid-

The Wolfs Cub 57

able opponents as the world had seen. They
were less venal than many of the earlier
knights and soldiers of forttme. Their serv-
ices were not sold but freely given.

Among the voltmteers from the United
States in the Texan service, the names
stand conspicuous of Colonel James Bowie
and Colonel David Crockett, author, htmter,
Congressman, whose diatribes against Jack-
son were more violent and wittier than any
modem historian's. Few novels of frontier
life at that period went to a second edition
which were not virtually based on their
biographies; and the boys who hid Crockett
or Mayne Reid in hayricks for unobserved
reading, got truer impressions of Texas than
those now brought up strictly on school
histories. All truth can be misrepresented
or distorted in the telling, but some truths
it is not within the power of human speech
to exaggerate or even to adequately portray.

William Barrett Travis gave up his law
practice in North Carolina (or Alabama) to
win eternal fame as the commander in the
unparalleled defence of the Alamo.

Samuel Houston from an Indian wigwam
had risen to a command in the Florida war,
and to an Indian agency honorably and

58 The Mexican War

humanely administered. He had won the
confidence of settlers and Indians alike; and
if Jackson influenced at all Houston's deter-
mination to join the Texan settlers, it was
greatly to his credit to have induced the
presence on a doubly imperilled frontier
of that man who in his day stood first in
ability to conciliate the elements of border
discord. It was from the great unsurveyed
wilderness beyond the Red River that raids
on our own settlers were to be anticipated.

After war between Texas and Mexico broke
out Houston was made commander of the
eastern army of Texas, next commander-in-
chief, then first president of Texas, and
later United States senator.^

One ** volunteer" resigned his rank in
the United States army to cast in his lot
with the Texans, Albert Sidney Johnston, of
Connecticut ancestry, of whom General
John B. Gordon says: **In him more than in
any other man at that period when he was
killed at Shiloh were centred the hopes of
the Southern people. "2 General Grant, who

» Sam Houston and the War of Independence in Texas,
Alfred M. Williams, Boston, 1893.

^Reminiscences of the Civil War, General John B.
Gordon, C.S.A., New York, 1895, p. 125.

The Wolfs Cub 59

was his adversary at Shiloh, says of him:
**His contemporaries at West Point and
officers generally who came to know him
later . . . expected him to prove the most
formidable man to meet the Confederacy
would produce."

He proved to be **imdecided and vacil-
lating," in chief command . . . but *Vas
a man who would not abandon what he
deemed an important trust in the face of
danger, and continued in the saddle com-
manding imtil so exhausted by the loss of
blood that he had to be taken from his horse
and soon after died. ... He was a man
of high character and ability." ^

Other volimteers capable for council no
less than war were the Virginia Whartons,
one President of the Council, the other Secre-
tary of the Navy; Thomas J. Rusk of South
Carolina, Secretary of War, Commander of
the Texan army, Chief Justice and United
States Senator; David G. Burnet of New
Jersey, Provisional President; Doctor Branch
T. Archer of Virginia, President of the
Committee of Public Safety; Thomas J.
Chambers, first Chief Justice of the mis-

^ Personal Memoirs, U. S. Grant, New York, 1895,
vol. i., p. 297.

6o The Mexican War

joined provinces of Coahuila and Texas;
Henry Smith of Kentucky, first Provisional
Governor and the Secretary of the Treasury
under Houston when the wonderful restora-
tion was made of Texan finance.

These volunteers gave much to Texan
tradition. They ** had nobly come to the aid
of their brethren in this imequal contest, '* ^
and had helped them in civic formation as
well as in line of battle. But there were
few of them who survived the first onset of
the thousands of Mexico.

If the impression they made on Texan
character was mainly ideal, it was because
their remnant was of very few, and because
the character of the Texas people had a
fixed and durable existence before the
volunteers came to save it from destruc-
tion.

**The real root and foundation of the
prosperity and growth of Texas was in the
colony of Stephen F. Austin on the Brazos. ^
The character of the Austins, for whom
the capital of the State of Texas was

> History of South America and Mexico^ John M. Niles,
Hartford, 1837, vol. i., p. 209.

2 Sam Houston and the War of Independence in Texas,
Alfred M. Williams, Boston, 1893, p. 58.

The Wolfs Cub 6i

named, gave much to the character of
Texas.i

Moses Austin was the founder of this
colony, which was brought to a state of
prosperity by his son. Moses Austin was
bom in Durham, Connecticut, in 1764.
He married Maria Brown of Philadelphia,
established a commercial business in Rich-
mond, Virginia, and with his brother Stephen,
who was at the head of a large export house in
Philadelphia, set up smelting works on New
River, Wythe County, Virginia, opening lead
mines and manufacturing shot and sheet
lead. Meeting with reverses from adven-
turous speculation (this was the first venture
of the sort in the United States), he took a
grant from the Governor General of Louisiana
of a league of land at Potosi, moved there with
his family and founded Washington County,
Missouri. He became a large stockholder
in the Bank of St. Louis, and on its ruin in
18 1 8 surrendered the whole of his property
to the bank's creditors. In his ssth year
he attempted a large colony in Texas.
He went to Antonio de Bexar with his

> "It was the Austins who gave character to the Texan
settlements." — History of South America and Mexico,
John M. Niles, Hartford, 1838, vol. i., pp. 254-93.

62 The Mexican War

petition and was referred to the Commandant
General. He went to Mexico for an answer,
and on his return journey through 1200
miles of wilderness died of privation, June
10, 182 1, leaving to his son who was already
with him, an injunction to continue his work.
Such was the pioneer in the founding of Texas.
The son, Stephen Fuller Austin, whom
Houston called **the father of Texas," and
Pease, **the father of the colony,'*^ also, as
Brady says, 2 'literally gave his life for
his country." ... **A pure and un-
selfish patriot, a devoted and disinterested
public servant, a prudent and far-seeing
statesman, a cultivated, high-minded gentle-
man and a kindly and generous philanthro-
pist"; to which it may be added that he was
a capable general of a Texan army, from the
command of which he. was relieved to act
as special commissioner to the United States,
and as such exhibited the highest qualifica-
tions as a diplomat and an orator.^ He

» History of South America and Mexico, John M.
Niles, with account of Texan Revolution and War by
L. T. Pease, Hartford, 1837, p. 361.

2 Conquest of the Southwest, Cyrus Townsend Brady,
New York, 1908, p. 138.

3 Speech at Louisville, March 7, 1836, Niles, pp. 269
and 279.

" He may have been at times too sensible of colonial

The Wolfs Cub 63

was bom in Austinville, Wythe County,
Virginia, in 1793. In 1804 he was a pupil in
the academy of Colchester, Connecticut, in
1805 in the near-by academy in New London.
At the age of fifteen he was in the Transyl-
vania University, Kentucky, and at twenty
was a member of the Kentucky Legislature.
In 18 1 9 he went to Little Rock, Arkansas,
where he was made Circuit Judge. Upon
his father's death in 182 1, observant of a
dying wish, he took up the task of pressing
the petition to the Spanish government for
a land grant. This he obtained from the
Supreme Government of the East Internal
Province. He was to settle three hundred
families, each settler to be entitled to 640
acres, plus 320 acres if he had a wife, plus
100 acres for each child, and 80 acres for
each slave. ^

With a special commissioner of the province

obligations to Mexico, but to him belongs the great
honor of giving the revolution clear moral defensi-
bility." — Texas, a Contest of Civilizations, George Pierce
Garrison, Boston, 1905, p. 183.

> History of the Pacific States of North America,
Hubert Howe Bancroft, 34 vols., San Francisco, 1882-
1890, vol. xvi., p. 61, citing White's Colonial Laws, i.,
586-7.

64 The Mexican War

and seventeen companions he proceeded to
Antonio de Bexar, then to Bahia, and ex-
plored up the rivers Brazos and Colorado
(of Texas), where was an uninhabited wil-
derness. Then he went to Louisiana and
advertised for land-purchasers. Meantime
Mexico started on its series of revolutions;
Austin was compelled to obtain renewal
of his grant from the dictator Iturbide, then
from the republic, then from another dictator.
He paused from his colonizing work long
enough to make an apparently successful
attempt to give solidity to the Mexican
government.

In 1823 he delivered a *' pro jet of a con-
stitution for the Republic of Mexico to his
friend Ramos Arizpe who, as chairman of the
Committee on the Constitution, reported
the Constitution of 1824, as adopted . . .
which seems to have been but the elaboration
of Austin's."^ This was the constitution
which gave to Niles his generous hopes for
the future of the Mexican republic,^ and but
for the criminal perversity of her leaders
Stephen Puller Austin might have been the

» Bibliography of Texas, C. W. Raines, of Texas His-
torical Society, 1896, p. 14.
2 Supra, p. 26.

The Wolfs Cub 65

father of Mexico in only a more limited
sense than he was the father of Texas.

With apparently stronger guaranties of
constitutional government, Austin got a great
increase of promised privileges.*

Under the revised grants, to each settler
with his family was to be allotted about 4605
acres. An excellent agricultural and graz-
ing colony was soon established. That the
colonists held a few slaves was a blemish
on their institutions, but it was not an in-
delible stain on their lives and characters.
The ownership of man is revolting to humane
ideals. Practically there was much to excuse
the settlers. No family in whatever need
could obtain a cook or a stable boy or a
nurse except by purchase. The home mis-
sionaries of our southwestern borders, as late
as in the fifties, considered themselves
compelled '*to take their slaves with them";
and were well rated for it by Rev. Dr. Leon-
ard Bacon. ^

Practically too, and except in name,

> For special guaranties see speech at Louisville*
March 7, 1836, Niles, i., p. 271.

» Records of convention of society at Hartford. I
remember no reference, but have a distinct personal
recollection of the debate. — C. H. O.
s

66 The Mexican War

such slavery as ever subsisted in the Brazos
colony was for the slaves an enviable lot
compared with the peonage system which
subsisted in Mexico. The ownership which
shocks our ideals has as one effect a strong
incentive to humane treatment to the chattel.
Brutality to slave, or horse, carries penalty
to an owner in loss of service. Something
akin to old age service pension was also
an almost invariable adjunct of slavery.
Hardly a plantation was without its decrepit
old ** mammies and uncles," who by the
unwritten law of **the families" were entitled
to draw rations and equipments. It is
shame enough that under the law there
could be exceptions — or that there could be
slavery at all — but there never was under
slavery so bad a condition of the poor as
under the peonage of Mexico.^

David A. Wells quotes from the report of
Consul General Strother to the State De-
partment, December, 1885, ** The scale of
living of the laboring classes is decidedly
inferior in comfort and neatness to that of
the negroes of the Southern States where is

» Niles, pp. 73, 74, 75. Narrative of the Texan Santa
F^ Expedition, George WiVkins Kendall, New York, 1844,
vol. ii., pp., 112, 113, 122.

The Wolf's Cub 67

slavery"*; and adds that ** land-owners will
not employ a laborer unless sold with a
debt which he never can pay," and which
he is compelled to work out hopelessly so
long as capable — cast loose and left to starve
or steal when decrepitude comes upon him. 2

At this age of the world no defence of
slavery is possible or could be desired. Its
warmest apologists have long since come to
rejoice at its elimination from our problems.
But when it is sought to cast shame upon
the nation because it waged a war or furnished
colonists whereby, as a collateral effect, the
slavery it soon abolished seemed likely to be
extended, it is well to remember that even
slavery extension would have stood to the!
credit side of accoimts with progress ofj
humanity in that it went pari passu wit
the displacement of peonage.^

The laborers on the haciendas

are many of them slaves — slaves to all intents
and purposes, although they may enjoy a nom-
inal liberty. A large proportion of them, prob-

^ASti4dyofMexico,i:^SividK, Wells, New York, 1887,

P-95-

« Ihid,^ pp. 27, 28-29.

» *• If any individual in Texas owes but twenty-five
cents, the creditor, by application to the alcade,can

68 The Mexican War

ably, are in some way indebted to the proprietor,
the law giving him a lien upon their services
tmtil such debts are paid; but most especial
good care does he take that they never pay him
so long as their services are in any way pro-
fitable. They are in his debt and are kept so
until age or infirmity renders their labor unpro-
ductive; then the obligation is cancelled, and
they are cast upon the world to beg, steal, or
starve as best they may.

Should some one of the peons, more active,
ambitious or enterprising than his fellows, chance
to accumulate enough money to pay his debt
and regain his liberty, how then? He offers his
master the price of his redemption, but the
latter, upon some flimsy pretext, refuses to take
it — ^he has not yet done with the services of the
vigorous servant. He bribes his creature the
alcade, who "shuts his eyes to justice, opens his
hand to the longer purse of the proprietor, and
the unforttmate serf is once more driven to
bondage.*

The rude adobe hovels of the common laborers

have him, with his family, decreed to his service, and re-
main in that state of slavery until he is able to pay the
debt from the wages accruing from his labor after being
compelled to subsist his dependent family." — Houston
to Santa Anna, March 21, 1842. History of Texas, H.
Yoakum, New York, 1856, vol. ii., p. 556.

> Narrative of the Texan Santa Fd Expedition, George
William Kendall, 2 vols.. New York, 1844, vol. ii., p. 113.

The Wolfs Cub 69

built of dried mud], frequently have but one
room, in which the whole family, father and
mother, brothers and sisters, sons-in-law and
daughters-in-law, huddle together upon one
common earthen floor.*

The two or three hundred inhabitants of San
Sebastian do not more than half live. Their
little huts are built of small stones and mud,
without doors or windows; they have neither
chairs nor beds, nor in fact furniture of any
kind — in fine, are infinitely worse off than Choc-
taw or Cherokee Indians, not only as regards
clothing and food, but habitations and all the .
necessaries of life.^

A mortgage on a man may be worse for
him than ownership in fee.

But slavery had little influence on the
Texan colony; there was little of it. It was
on their own hands and heads that the
settlers must rely. To the south and west
of them was the ** lamb" of which more in
another chapter. Along the gulf were the
Carancachua Indians, whose attacks were
repulsed only by early and desperate war;
the pirates of Aury and Lafitte, and later
the Spanish ships. To the west and north

« Narrative of the Texan Santa F4 Expedition^ vol. ii.,
112-113.

« /6id., vol. ii., 122.

70 The Mexican War

and all about them the Apaches, the
Comanches, the Pawnees, the Caddos and the
Lipans.

They formed an orderly, industrious agri-
cultural community, almost altogether self-
governing; for the nearest Mexican authority
was five hundred miles away across the great
river and an intervening wilderness, at Sal-
tillo in Coahuila, where they were allowed
two representatives; and their local self-
government was guaranteed to them under
a republican constitution which was a
condition precedent and a part of their
(contract of settlement. Convicts and ref-
ugees from justice were excluded from the
colony. Doors were without locks. A few
English, Irish, and Germans, descendants of
Pilgrim fathers, Hollanders, Virginia cava-
liers. South Carolina Huguenots, hunters
from Kentucky and Tennessee met in friend-
ship in Texas.

. Contrary to her plighted faith, Mexico gave
them no protection. ^ They defended their

» What were Mexico's guaranties to the colonists and
what her failure absolute, see speech of Stephen F.
Austin, Louisville, March 7, 1836, Niles, pp. 269-279.
**A country we have redeemed from the wilderness
and conquered without any aid or protection from
the Mexican government."

The Wolf's Cub 71

lives and property by their own valor against
the wild beasts and the wilder savages.
They supplied their larders from their own
acres and from the spoils of the hunt. The
necessities of their lives were the plough
and the rifle. The one gave them their
bread, the other their meat and the safety /
of their habitations. Two essentials of
existence, — ^the plough and the rifle; but
especially the rifle. How and why it was
attempted to take away from them the
rifle, and what was the result, is part of
a later record.

CHAPTER V

THE LAMB

WHEN a papal btill divided the spoil
of the heathen between Spain and
Portugal, by an imaginary line about one
hundred miles west of the Azores, it fur-
nished some data for the solution of such
an enigma as is the contrast between the
many grave, witty, chivalrous gentlemen of
Spain (or the devoted padres of occasional
Mexican missions), and the unrivalled Span-
ish oppressors and ravishers of feebler races.
It is a startling anomaly that the native
land of Murillo and Cervantes and Velasquez,
which gave to the world the Cid and the
caravels of Columbus, should have exceeded
all others in the terrors of the Inquisition,
and made her colonies the crucibles of her
gold.* The anomaly is less startling when

> History of South America and Mexico, , John M.
Niles, Hartford, 1838, vol. i., p. 70.
72

The Lamb 73

it is realized that all beyond that meridian
came to be looked upon as but a mine to be
worked for the wealth of the owners; and
that all means were justified for subduing
whoever doubted that a chosen people had
been given **the heathen for an inheritance."

The cruel conquests of Cortez and his
mailed cohorts have been made familiar
by the vivid pages of Prescott and General
Lew Wallace.

For the sequel, the development of mixed
races in Mexico, the tyrannies of command-
ants and governors, there is testimony
enough from Niles and Abbot.

The comparatively civilized race of the
Montezumas was virtually annihilated. ^ Ab-
bot estimates that three millions of them
were massacred by the Spaniards. Worse
followed worse for generations after Cortez.
As late as 1775 the condition of the country
was estimated as worse than under Cortez.

While, for Spanish American possessions,
loot was law, and robbery of Aztecs and Incas
constituted the fabulous wealth which the
galleons or the flota bore into Seville or
Cadiz, civilized nations applauded and long

» Essai Politique, Von Humboldt, vol., i., p. 117. Mex-
ico in Transition, William Butler, New York, 1892, p. 36.

74 The Mexican War

continued to abet the policy. Lamartine
cynically half approved the doctrine, ** Amer-
ica belongs to Europe."

There was little difference in the policy of
the two nations (Spain and Britain) relative
to their colonial possessions in America.

Both regarded their colonies as subordi-
nate to the parent state, and attempted to
render them contributory to its interest and
prosperity.

This policy seems to grow out of the relations
which subsist between colonies and their
mother country; as the original object in
planting them, since the sixteenth century, has
been to benefit the colonizing country, to drain
off a surplus or dangerous population, to draw
a direct tribute from them, under some form
of taxation, or for the interests of commerce.*

The British colonial system was vague
and tended to either the establishment of
absolute power in the home administration
in all cases whatsoever, or independence of
the colony. Happily for the world the
Americans secured the latter. 2 But in the
Spanish colonies, the governors or deputy

» History of South America and Mexico ^ John M.
Niles, Hartford, 1838, p. 70.

^Ibid., p. 69.

The Lamb 75

sovereigns being responsible only to the
crown (neither the Spanish nation nor the
colony having any voice in affairs), the
colonial governments became worse despot-
isms than Russia or Turkey and more
dangerous, the deputies being held to no
responsibility save for ample and immedi-
ate revenue to the king, and his favorites —
including themselves.^

*'In the grants of the country, made to
the first adventurers, the Spanish monarchs
reserved one fifth of the gold and silver that
might be obtained." 2

Indians were distributed with the lands
as serfs and slaves; ** under accumulated
burdens and hardships, to which they were
subjected by unfeeling and rapacious masters,
their native spirit was broken, they became
humbled and degraded, and the race was
rapidly wasting away."

The decree of Charles V., 1542, abolishing
the repartimientos and all rights to hold
slaves only changed the Indians' condi-
tion to that of vassals to the crown, under
hopeless conditions of tax debts payable
in personal service, which, with fees of the

» History of South America and Mexico, p. 66.
2 Ihid., p. 70.

76 The Mexican War

clergy, made the measure intended for the
protection of the natives a fertile cause of
increasing their miseries. ^

Later measures, especially under the min-
istry of Count Galvez, relieved much of their
oppression in the eighteenth century, but
'*no other situations were open to them
but those of common laborers or artisans.'* 2

The average Mexican official came to be a
mixture of the cruellest Spanish blood and
the worst Indian. The character of the
race was reflected in, as well as moulded
by, a religion in which Jesuitry had been
embellished by the rites of the savage, and
the Inquisition by the blood sacrifices of the
Aztec.

The population 'was brutal and priest-
ridden. Poor as were the national fi-
nances, the churches at one time held about
$300,000,000 exempt. The annual income
of the archbishop of Mexico was $121,875.

During centuries of oppression and misrule
the Mexican people were harried by taxation
and confiscation, bled by greed and cruelty.
There were revolts and suppressions of
revolts, raids and reprisals. The one rule

» History of South America and Mexico, p. 74.
^Ibid., p. 75.

The Lamb 77

of war was Vae victis. The red flag floated
over conquered cities or provinces, in streets
or chaparal. The battle hymn was * * Deguilo ! ' '
(Cut throat!). **No quarter!" was the cus-
tom of the country, unless an unwary foe
could be deceived by false promises of parole.

A few and comparatively recent examples
only need be cited of what cannot be made
other than hideous reading.

After the battle of January 17, 18 14, at
Pascuaro,

Matamoros, Morelos' lieutenant, a very active
and brave officer, and seven hundred men
were made prisoners. Morelos [the general of
the independents] made every effort to save
Matamoros, and offered to exchange for him
and his staff five hundred Spaniards which
Matamoros had himself taken a short time
before. But the bloodthirsty royalist general,
Llano, declined this offer and immediately
ordered Matamoros and the seven hundred
prisoners shot; which he must have known
would expose the lives of the Spanish prisoners,
. . . whom Morelos by way of retaliation put
to death.*

This same General Morelos was captured
by the royalists in 1815. It is to the credit

» History of South America and Mextco, pp. 148-9.

78 The Mexican War

of the Congress at Tehuacan that it sent a
despatch imploring Calleja "to save this
valuable life, which he did not condescend
to answer"; and **Morelos was shot in the
back as a traitor.** *

General Mina, the filibuster (?) (see page
52, supra), was defeated in his expedition
after effecting a junction with the independ-
ent forces at Sombrero, and captured at
Venadito, September 27, 1817, conducted to
the head-quarters of Linan commanding the
royal forces before Remedios, where he was
condemned and shot November 11, 181 7;
for which the Spanish government conferred
titles and distinctions.^

The royalists prosecuted the siege of Reme-
dios. Torres, the independent leader after
the loss of Mina,

finding his ammunition failing, evacuated the
place on the night of Jan. i, 18 18. The evacu-
ation was so unskilfully conducted that nearly all
of the garrison were killed or made prisoners ; and
the inhabitants of the town, of all ages and both
sexes, unarmed and unprotected, were involved
in one common ruin, and nearly all massacred.^

1 History of South America and Mexico j iJo-J??

2 Ibid., 152-3.
3 /Wei., 153.

The Lamb 79

Nearly the same had been done at Quautla,
with what malice prepense may be judged
by the written words of the royalist captor
Calleja, seventy-five days before the sur-
render, **We will precipitate this town and
its inhabitants into the centre of hell."^

No country is without its men and women
of courage and devotion, though Mexico by
reprisals and butchery came to be well-nigh
depopulated of them. After long defeat
and disappointment the independents suc-
ceeded in throwing off the yoke of foreign
domination, and by the treaty of Cordova,
August 20, 182 1, between Iturbide and
Senor O'Donoju, lieutenant-general of the
armies of Spain, the independence of New
Spain was recognized and a constitutional
monarchy was to be established; but supreme
authority was seized by Iturbide.^ He dis-
solved Congress, declared himself emperor and
ordered a new junta of '*two members from
each of the larger provinces and one from
the smaller, 'all of whom I will nominate' "

In 1822, Iturbide's army, raised to support
**the plan of Iguala," was called **the army
of the three guarantees" — to preserve the

> History of South America and Mexico, 146.
^ Ibid., pp. 162-173.

8o The Mexican War

holy, apostolic Catholic religion, the inde-
pendence of Mexico, and the union of Span-
iards and Mexicans, to wit, the abolition of
caste.*

After the overthrow of the royal govern-
ment by Iturbide, and the treaty with
O'Donoju on the basis of the plan of Iguala,
Spain, although obstinately refusing to ac-
knowledge the independence of Mexico, made
no effort to regain her authority over it until
the expedition from Havana, July 5, 1829,
of General Barradas with 4500 men, one
seventy-four-gun ship, two frigates and sev-
eral corvettes, brigs, and transports. ^ All
the important acts passed by the General
Congress during their session of 1826 — and
among them was one abolishing forever all
titles of nobility in Mexico — ^had been
peaceably carried into execution.

The Congress of the United States, in
spite of the protests of Spain, formally
recognized the independence of Mexico
and commissioned Mr. Poinsett minister
resident.

The prompt recognition of the indepen-
dence of Mexico, when peace had been signed

» History of South America and Mexico , p. 160.
i Ibid., p. 198.

The Lamb 8i

on the part of Spain only by General
O'Donoju in the field, became afterwards a
precedent against Mexico in the longer
delayed, and far more logical, recognition of
Texas.

Iturbide, usurper and tyrant, was suc-
ceeded by Victoria, president under the
Constitution of 1824, and the Congress prom-
ised for a while much progress in liberal
government. The Spanish residents were
banished unlawfully, though many evaded
the order. There were two or three revolts
and executions; but Victoria held his office
until the expiration of his term, when Pedraza
was elected his successor.

General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna,
however, with his and other regiments
which joined him under pretence of driving
out the Spaniards, supported the claim of
General Guerrero and, after brutal war in
the streets of the capitol, established him
in the presidency. Guerrero, notwithstand-
ing the violence of his accession, gave himself
to securing the peace of thecotmtry, and
received extraordinary powers from the
Congress to forward the forcible expulsion
of the army of 4500 Spaniards under Bar-
radas.

82 The Mexican War

After compelling the capittilation of the
Spaniards, although Santa Anna was in
command as Secretary of War, humane
terms of surrender were given and observed.
Slavery was abolished, or rather an order
to that effect was proclaimed. Then Guer-
rero surrendered his temporary powers as
dictator — it was at first supposed vol-
untarily, but later proved to have been to
avoid compulsion from the Vice-President,
Bustamente, who was now in his turn
supported by Santa Anna, became dic-
tator, issued a decree declaring Guerrero an
outlaw, organized a military tribunal to
try him, had him tried, sentenced, and shot.

Sustained by the aristocracy and clergy,
who from the first had been alarmed^ at the
probable influence of republican institutions
upon their own privileges, and supported by a
military force ... he proceeded to establish
a perfect despotism in the country, disregard-
ing every constitutional or legal restraint. . . .
The national Congress . . . became the passive
instrument of his will. His order alone was
sufficient warrant for any act of oppression or
cruelty; his military satraps soon learned to
imitate the example of their chief, and com-
pleted the resemblance between the gov-

The Lamb 83

eminent of Mexico and that of a band of
robbers.^

Santa Anna now played the r61e of de-
fender of the constitution, and headed an
insurrection of the army, which deposed
his late fellow-conspirator, Bustamente; ** re-
called Pedraza, whom he had deposed four
years before, and whose time was now about
to expire; withdrew to his hacienda, and
waited the movement of the people in his
favor." 2

His pose of Cincinnatus was as effective as
he could have hoped, and he was imani-
mously chosen President in 1833. His
treachery to every ally had assumed the
guise of fidelity to constitutional liberty.
To that he was to prove himself to be a yet
more arrant traitor.

He dissolved the council, overawed the
suffrages of the people, and in his first
message, January, 1835, very plainly inti-
mated his opinion that the people of Mexico
were " unworthy of a free government; and,
as the Congress had been chosen for no other

> History of South America and Mexico^ John M,
Niles, Hartford, 1838, p. 201,
3 Ibid., p. 2o6.

84 The Mexican War

purpose than to reflect his opinions, it pro-
ceeded to abolish the constitution of 1824,
abolishing at the same time all the state
constitutions and state authorities." The
states all submitted — with a single exception.
Zacatecas had furnished Mexico's best troops.
No part of Mexico had made equal sacri-
fices for the common cause against Spain.
Santa Anna was principally indebted to the
Zacatecans (and the Texans) for his own
success against Bustamente. He knew well
the people he had to encounter, and the
spirit which would animate the five thou-
sand state militia, which near the city of
Zacatecas prepared to resist his tyranny.
He was to surpass Bustamente in barbarity
and treachery. * * He was utterly unscrupulous
and treacherous and betrayed every party
and every ally that put trust in him; vindic-
tive and cruel even beyond the barbarous
habits of Mexican warfare, and never spared
a defeated enemy.' '^ The only exceptions
were when he was under restraint of Guerrero,
of Austin, or, as at Meir, of the American and
the British consuls. At Zacatecas *' he pre-
pared to accomplish by the basest treachery
what he feared to attempt in a fair contest."

» Sam Houston and the War of Independence in Texas ^
Alfred M. Williams, Boston, 1893, p. 85.

The Lamb 85

He sent there several of his officers "who
affected to join the people in supporting the
authority of the state and offered their serv-
ices to command the militia, which were ac-
cepted." These treacherous officers allowed
the Zacatecans to be surrounded by superior
force, half of them cut to pieces before they had
an opportunity for resistance ; the rest of them
were ** driven into the city, where the victors
for several days indulged themselves in ex-
cesses too shocking and barbarous for recital."

Foreigners, as well as natives who had taken
no part in public affairs . . . were butchered
without ceremony and their property given up
to the pillage of the soldiery or confiscated to
the use of the officers [until] the tyrant had
sufficiently glutted his vengeance.

Military despotism was fully established ex- '
cept in Texas, whose population was composed j
almost wholly of emigrants from the United |
States . . . drawn by liberal colonization laws i
and expectation of free government. It was \
in the population of Texas and in them alone
that Santa Anna foresaw any serious obstacle
to his designs. His resolution was therefore
taken, which was to exterminate or drive them
from the country.^ /

> History of South America and Mexico, John M. Niles,
Hartford, 1838, pp. 207-8.

CHAPTER VI

ANTICIPATIONS OP TROUBLE IN TEXAS.

WRITERS who attribute the Mexican
War to the conspiracies of slave-
holders put little stress on complications of
an early date.

March 15, 1827, Henry Clay, Secretary of
State, instructed Joel R. Poinsett, Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary
to Mexico, to offer one million of dollars
for Texas, or one half million for a boun-
/ dary on the Colorado River in Texas; and
added:

Large grants to citizens of the United States
indicate that Mexico places little value on that
province; and the emigrants will carry with
them our principles of law, liberty, and religion.
. . . Some collisions have occurred and others
may be anticipated with confidence. These
86

Anticipations of Trouble in Texas 87

collisions may insensibly enlist the sympathies

/

and feelings of the two republics, and lead to
misunderstandings. ^

It had been supposed that Texas belonged
to the United States as a part of the Louisi-
ana purchase. John Quincy Adams has
been very unjustly blamed for not retaining /
its possession. He was the only American •
signer of the treaty of 18 19 who had held
out for maintaining our title to Texas. But
by that treaty with Spain the Sabine had
been made the boundary of Louisiana to the
southwest; and Mr. Adams was too honest
to continue to claim what his own hand had
signed away — ^if indeed he had been right as
to the former title. He remained of course
quite appreciative of the value of Texas;
and, before its unfortimate involvement in /
the slavery controversies, was most anxious '
to obtain or re-possess it.

Later, a prefix of two letters became a
subject of heated diatribes of politicians and
historians, when re-annexation was urged;'
though in view of the earlier claims of Adams
the word would seem natural enough. Even
Mr. Carl Schurz quotes without objection

> 25tli Congress, ist session House of Reps., Ex. Doc.
No. 42.

88 The Mexican War

Clay's letter to the National Intelligencer^
,;.,.x^Tmown as his Raleigh Ipttoi^, of April 17, 1844:

He [Henry Clay] had believed and contended
that the United States had acquired a title
to Texas by the Louisiana purchase. But that
title had been relinquished to Spain by the
treaty of 1819, and it was idle and dishonor-
able to talk of restiming our title. Under the
administration of John Quincy Adams he had
attempted to re-purchase Texas from Mexico,
but without success.^

After having learned to speak of r^-pur-
chase, the word r^-annexation would find
^ place easily in the talk of common men, or
Congressmen.

The praiseworthy attempt of the Adams
administration to get Texas for a price was
unfortunately a failure. Poinsett reported
that **the purchase was impracticable, that
the proud temper of the Mexicans was such
>^^ that an official offer would only inflame their
\*ealousy." It was a far-sighted and benevo-
lent attempt of Adams and Clay, and, had
it succeeded, would have been a service to
their countrymen and their neighbors second
to none of the services which made their

» Life of Henry Clay, Carl Schurz, 2 vols., Boston, 1887,
vol., i., p. 244.

Anticipations of Trouble in Texas 89

lives illustrious. Even in failure there is room
for gratitude for their wise and good intent.
The great area from the Sabine to the Rio ,

Grande (389,795 square miles) was to become/
of inestimable value; but Mexican utilization!
of it had long been proved to be impracticable. !

The Spanish settlements east of the Rio
Grande were forced plants, or transplanta-
tions from the Philippines and the Carolines,
made in order to give color to claims under
the discoveries of De Soto, and to resist the
wedge of French outposts which La Salle
planned driving down, from the Canadian
great lakes and portages, to the mouth of
the Mississippi. * The struggle for the control
of the Gulf of Mexico, which President Tyler
saw engaging the powers of Great Britain
and the United States, 2 had its prototype
in the contest made by Spain and France for
the possession of Cuba and the shores of the
gulf from Florida to the Rio Grande.

Neither Spanish nor Mexican occupation
had reduced Texas to anything resembling /
what it has become the fashion to cail ef- ;
fective occupancy.

« The Journeys of Reni Robert Cavalier^ Sieur De la
Salle, New York, 1906, vol., i p. 7.

^Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, pp. 333-4.

90 The Mexican War

The United States had been prompt to
f recognize the independence of Mexico. Any
^1 change was hopeful. But there was no
j betterment in Texan conditions. The con-
stitution drafted by Austin induced the hope
that legislatures of the provinces and local
self-government would solve great difficulties.
But local self-government got no chance.

The constitution of Mexico [says Kendall]
guarantees to all classess and colors the
greatest liberty and equality. . . The practice
is an entirely different matter. [And he adds
a humorous note] : Such was the case when I
was in Mexico; as the Constitution is changed
on an average every six months, a diflEerent
state of thing may exist now.^

Ladd says:

In fact there was no true constitutional gov-
ernment. These military usurpers seized public
and private property to maintain the army,
till superseded by others. It was difficult to
tmite the different sections of the Mexican
confederation upon laws for the national
welfare. The territory held by this distracted
nation was immense ... to a great extent
uninhabited ... no railroads, canals, or tele-

> Narrative of the Texan Santa F4 Expedition, George
Wilkins Kendall, New York, 1844, vol., ii., p. 113.

Anticipations of Trouble in Texas 91

graphs, and but few post-roads and highways
of travel to foster common interests and opinions
among the people, who had been alienated
from all respect for governments by centuries
of the misrule and selfish exactions of Spain.*

The character of many of the Mexican
officials was inconceivably brutal ; * * they were
men who possessed all the vices of savage life •
without one of the virtues that civilization^
teaches." After capture of the Santa F6 expe-
dition, Armijo, the Governor of New Mexico,
murdered prisoners, and cut off the ears of the
dead; to keep his tally right with the central
dictatorship, he had the ears to show for
vouchers.2 Recruits for the regular army were
literally roped in ; * * convicts and criminals tied
together in strings," ragged and wretched,
the majority of their officers taken from the
higher classes and placed at once at the head
of companies and regiments without either
theoretical or practical knowledge of arms." ^

The intolerable character of Mexican gov- |

« History of the War with Mexico, Horatio O. Ladd,
New York, 1883, p. 19.

» Narrative of the Texan Santa F4 Expedition,
George Wilkins Kendall, New York, 1844, vol. i., p.
292.

» Ibid., vol., ii., pp. 135 and 394-5.

92 The Mexican War

emment has been exhibited in a previous
chapter, but has so important a bearing on
questions of the causes of the campaigns
fought on Texan soil and in American politics
and history that, at the risk of some reiter-
ation, it is well to keep informed how far
such character came down immitigated to
the period of contest between the two races,
and to have in mind the testimony of an
eye-witness and keen observer like Kendall,
from whose pages it is a pleasure to transcribe
his distinction between a kindly people and
their barbarous oppressors. It will explain
much of the later forbearance of the Ameri-
can nation with the Mexican rulers.

The Mexican people as a body are kind and
benevolent. ... I am speaking of the lower
orders and consequently of the mass.^ . . .
With deep respect and reverence the moral
excellence of the pious cura of El Paso inspired
more than one Protestant American. 2

It is necessary to keep in mind that in the
regions about to become the theatre of war

« Narrative of the Texan Santa F^ Expedition^ vol.,
ii., p. 131.

27Wd., vol., ii., p. 41. Whittier's " Angels of Buena
Vista."

Anticipations of Trouble in Texas 93

there was an Indian population more numer-
ous and, if possible, more treacherous andy
hostile, than elsewhere on the continent.
The fact serves in some measure as an insuf-
ficient apology for the treacherous and futile
attempts to make Mexican sovereignty ap-
pear anything more respectable than a by-
word for exaction and cruelty. It also serves
to show some reason for the liberal terms
offered by Mexico to the Austin colonists ; and
again, when correctly understood, to lessen
the doubt whether the Austins, in trusting
to Mexican promises, displayed a lack of
sagacity not to be expected in a business
enterprise however bold.

By Mexican authority we know that the na-
tive tribes in the neighborhood of the Rio -^
Grande were a bar to the advance of Spanish
dominion, from the earliest occupations.

The conquests beyond Saltillo and Chihuahua
were suspended in 1670 on account of the
immense number of Indians. ^

In 1 7 19, after the civil and military admin-
istration of the Marquis de Aguayo [which
marked the high tide of Spanish or Mexican

» Report of the Commission of Investigation sent in
1873 by the Mexican Government to the frontier of
Texas, New York, 1875, pp. 318, 319.

94 The Mexican War

rule] had placed troops, missionaries, and
new colonists from the Canary Islands as far
as the boundaries of the Red River, there was
general tranquillity along the immense line of
defence. The position of the province called
Coahuila and Texas, being the farthest advanced,
engaged it more deeply than its neighbors in the
ensuing wars of conquest. . . . Security was fully
established on the right bank of the Rio GrandeA

That the Indian problem remained a
serious one, especially when the tribes were
incited to violence by Mexican emissaries,
is apparent from the existence of some thirty
United States forts which an ordinary map
locates between theRioGrandeandthe Nueces.
Garrison mentions the danger from Indians
in 1836 to the inhabitants of Nacogdoches.

M. M. Kenney recites a dozen Indian
raids and atrocities from 1836 to 1S39.2

The Spanish and Mexican colonists had
failed to protect themselves or hold their own
against the Indians. The supports from the
Carolines and the Philippines had proved
insufficient, and the military posts of the
Marquis de Aguayo fell into disuse. The

> Italics mine. — C. H. O.

i History of Texas, edited by William G. Wosten,
Dallas, Tex., 1898.

Anticipations of Trouble in Texas 95

white population shrunk into insignificance, )
and the red men crowded them out.

The chief authority always in regard to
Texan affairs, on whateversubject he speaks —
an almost, or quite, unquestioned though gen-
erally ignored authority — is Stephen F. Austin.
He says: "The Comanches and other tribes
waged a constant and ruinous war against the
Spanish settlements. . . . The incursions of
the Indians extended beyond ]i,e, to the west-/'
ward of] the Rio Bravo del Norte [upper Rio
Grande] and desolated thatpart of thecountry.^

It is not surprising, then, that a Spanish
nation, which for two centuries had failed —
mainly, it is true, by reason of the unfaithful-
ness of its officials — to make any noticeable /
or permanent advance against a red race, in
spite of using means not in the arsenals of
other civilized nations, and notwithstanding
its expensive importations of settlers from
the antipodes, should have looked with envy
on another and nearer class of settlers who,
meantime, had swept that same red race
half across the continent. Nor was it strange
that it had given liberal land holdings to
the new colonists in the hope and expecta-

' Speech of Stephen F.Austin,at Louisville ,Ky . ,on March
7, 1836 ; reported in full in Niles, vol., i., pp. 269-2 79.

96 The Mexican War

tion that they would establish a civilized

I barrier against Indian invasions of nearer

/ Mexican territory, and that they would

i eventually assist in enlarging the habitable

; borders of Mexico. **In order to restrain

these savages" — ^Austin continues — **and

bring them into subjection, the government

■*' [of Mexico] opened Texas for settlement." ^

Nor is it surprising that men of the quality

of the Texan settlers should have expected

to hold their own against savages, assisted

by the self-interest of a nominally civilized

nation in the rear and flank of their foes.

Mexico guaranteed the safety of the Texan

\ settlers manifestly in her own interest —

\ an interest amounting to a necessity. She

guaranteed it by the general guarantee of the

object of government, the well-being, security,
^nd happiness of the governed. Allegiance
ceases whenever it is clear, evident, and palpable
that this object is in no respect effected.

Beside this general guarantee [all this is in
the unanswerable words of Austin] we had others
of a special, definite, and positive character —
the colonization laws of i823-*24 and '25 . . .

> Speech of Stephen F. Austin at Louisville, Ky.,
March 7, 1836, reported in full in Niles, vol. i., p. 270.

Anticipations of Trouble in Texas 97

especially guaranteed protection for persons
and property, and the right of citizenship.*

By the organic act of the 7th of May, 1824, /
Texas was joined with Coahuila until Texas
possessed the necessary elements to form a
separate state by herself.

Texas had suffered long enough from the im-
possible joinder with Coahuila and govern-
ment from its capital hundreds of miles away y
across an Indian-harried wilderness. She had>^
loyally kept her faith, and now sought for an
independent local government only by respect-
ful petitionandwithinherconstitutional rights.

How the guarantees of the Mexican govern-
ment to th6 Texan settlers were broken is told
inthesame statesmanlikespeechof Austin,and /
the official presentment of the Texan appeal,
presented by the first Texan minister to the
United States, Mpmnraji TTnnt; but the events
connected therewith are of so great consequence
in themselves, and so greatly affected the sym-
pathies of the already great American people,
as to have incited their leaders to action;
and, thereby becoming one of the principal in-/
centivesof the Mexican War, and one full justi-
fication of it, must be presented in their order.

« speech of Stephen F. Austin at Louisville, Ky.
March 7, 1836, Niles, vol., i., pp. 269-379.
7

CHAPTER VII

THE LAMB ASSAULTS THE CUB

IN the necessarily crowded recital of the
happenings in what has unjustly been
called the Texan revolt, and which was as
clearly a defence of vested rights as was the
equally miscalled American Revolution, noth-
ing can be properly understood, whether of
civic action or military strategy, without a
constant appreciation that the flanks of the
settlement were incessantly attacked by sav-
age Indians roused to even more than their
usual ferocity by the emissaries of those
whose protests of friendship and solemn
treaty of democratic government had proved
to be only a snare and a delusion, and who
now attacked the front with overwhelming
numbers, undisguised hatred, and a savagery
surpassing even that of their Indian allies.
The first Mexican open attack on Texas was
made with all the advantage of being led
98

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 99

by the recognized, de facto governors of both
parties to the issue, and with Mexican regu-
lars entrenched already in Texan strongholds.
. In 1830 Bustamente, having obtained the
dictatorship of Mexico by treason and fraud,
assisted, as has been related in a previous
chapter, by the treason and fraud of Santa
Anna and his army, set at defiance every
guarantee of the Mexican constitution, and
the grants to Austin. He prohibited immi-
gration from the United States to take up
the lands already granted. He established
customs duties in violation of vested privi-
leges. He prepared to make Texas a penal
colony, and sent a thousand soldiers there,
mostly criminals and convicts. He closed
all the Texan ports, except Anahuac, which
was outside the settlements and whose
harbor was inaccessible to vessels drawing
over six feet of water. He arrested citizens
and, when the colony protested, arrested the
envoys who bore the protest.

It was at this stage of Mexican history
that Santa Anna saw his opportunity to take
advantage of the indignation in the prov-
inces whose legislatures had been dissolved,
and whose officers had been discharged or
slaughtered. He selected Texas as the most

loo The Mexican War

promising field for a revolution, or resistance
to the revolution of Bustamente, posing as
the leader of liberty and constitutional
rights under the Austin Constitution.

John Austin with a force of 125 Texans
had captured Velasco.

, In a skirmish at Nacogdoches the Mex-
ican troops were defeated by, and declared
for, Santa Anna. They were allowed to
depart for Mexico to reinforce his war against
Bustamente beyond the Rio Grande; and the
Texans gave their adhesion to the * 'restored
liberal government and the Constitution of
1824."

There followed an interval of relief from
Mexican oppression. The war between Santa
Anna and Bustamente kept the Mexicans
busy. Whether the Texans had any confi-
dence in Santa Anna or not, they had reason
to believe themselves a recognized necessity
to the Mexican Government, constitutional
or despotic. To their arms was due its
re-establishment and the power of Santa
Anna. It was apparently a good opportunity
for getting into more practical and concrete
form the constitutional rights granted in the
charter of settlement and in the Mexican
constitution. They sent a memorial to the

The Lamb Assaults the Cub loi

Mexican Congress, petitioning for the
pFomised separation from Coahuila and for
a state constitution; and Austin took the
memorial to Mexico. Baffled by delays, and
finally despairing of action, he wrote back
to Bexar advising the Texans to fall back
on their original charter rights, unite, and
organize a state government in accordance
with the Constitution of 1824, without wait-
ing for superfluous sanction. ^

His letter was intercepted; he was taken
at Saltillo and kept in custody, a part of the
time in the dungeons of the Inquisition.

Coahuila was in a state of anarchy, worse
than that prevailing in the rest of Mexico.
After the battle of Guadalupe and the bar-
barous sack of Zacatecas, Santa Anna had
left his brother-in-law, General Cos, **to
regulate matters in Coahuila." Cos dis-
persed the Legislature, thus leaving Texas
without even the nominal government of
the joint provinces.^

> History of South America and Mexico, John M.
Niles, Hartford, 1838, p. 272. Austin's Louisville
speech.

2 "By midsummer of 1832 Texas was free from
military rule." — A History of the People of the United
States t John Bach MacMaster, New York, 1906, vol.,
vii., p. 252.

I02 The Mexican War

Whether with or without Mexican incita-
tion, the Indians became particularly trou-
blesome. They had mtirdered a party of
traders at Gonzales.

The Texans were forbidden to maintain a
militia in excess of one soldier to each 500
inhabitants, ^ which would permit a total of
about 420 men scattered over an enormous
area; and would be in about the propor-
tion of one soldier to thirty Indians. The
Texans were also commanded to give up
their rifles, which were the prime neces-
sity of border life, necessary for repulsing
enemies and necessary for providing food.

Like all civilized men — indeed like all
men, when left solely to their own devices
for any government whatever — they made a
government for themselves. Still loyaJ to
their word and to the forms of government
to which they had once subscribed, they
formed only temporary or provisional gov-
ernments. Their civic action took the form
ordinarily adopted by civilized peoples left
to the dangers of unrestrained rioting and
murderous invasion. They formed com-
mittees of safety.

» A History of the People of the United States, vol.
vi.,p. 253.

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 103

Many of the colonists, seeing their oppor-
tunity, favored, of course, an immediate
movement for independence, temporary-
independence having been thrust upon
them. There had been a few Mexican
troops left at Anahuac to collect customs. *
Colonel Travis, without orders from the
provisional government, drove them out
of their quarters, and sent them to
Bexar.

Commissioners were sent to arrange terms
of conciliation with General Cos. His an-
swer was an abortive attempt to arrest the
leaders of the party of independence.

Meantime, after two years' detention in
Mexico, Austin had been released by Santa
Anna with strong protestations of friendship
for himself and the Texans. Austin seems
to have known his man by this time, and
was too wise to take any more chances on his
word. He reported the hopeless overthrow
of liberal government. He, who had himself
given form to a democratic constitution
for Mexico, despaired of successful adminis-
tration under it. The leaders were too

> Quarterly, Tex. Historical Association, vol., iv., pp.
190-202'.

I04 The Mexican War

fotil. The Mexican Republic was over-
thrown.

The moderation and strength of Austin's
character united the people ; and, September
\i3, 183s, he issued a circular declaring that
peace negotiations were useless; he recom-
mended the election of delegates to a general
convention, and added, **We must defend
ourselves by force of arms.**

Before news of this could probably have
reached him, at all events about the middle
of the same month, General Cos started on

e march to Bexar with five hundred Mex-
ican troops.

October 2, 1835, was the date of the first
act of war between Texas and Mexico. It
was an attempt to enforce the decree of dis-
armament of the Texans by taking away
from the little town of Gonzales a six-
pounder cannon.

It cannot be appreciated at this day
how near to a matter of life or death it was
to a little settlement like Gonzales to have
a single six-pounder, probably a not very
effective one at that. They were face to face
every day and night with the Comanches
and Pawnees, stirred to hostility and ravage
by Mexican officials who shared their plunder

\

J&v.

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 105

and gave in barter for it powder and
lead.i

A war party of Comanches had once made
an attack on an expedition which had
with it a small cannon, and were reptilsed
at such an unexpected distance, and with
slaughter so little comprehended, that they
were thereafter very shy of such armament.
Since then **no party of the tribe has ever,
dared attack openly any company fortunate
enough to possess a field-piece." 2 it may
have been enough for the brave citizens of
Gonzales to know that their honor was at
stake and their liberties invaded by the pre-
cedent of taking their cannon; that their
rifles, already demanded, would go next,
and with their rifles their meat, their
property, and probably their lives and the
lives of their wives and children. But the
one cannon was of itself a treasure inesti^
mable; it was the safety of their city. The
cannon answered the attack with grape, and
its supports with rifle fire; and the Mexicans
under Colonel Ugartchea were driven back
to Bexar.

> Narrative of the Texan Santa F6 Expedition, George
Wilkins Kendall, New York, 1844, vol. i., pp. 400-401.

» lUd,, p. 144-

rJ

1 06 The Mexican War

Texas appreciated that the war was be-
gun. Sam Houston was made command-
er-in-chief in eastern Texas; Stephen F.
Austin was made commander-in-chief at Gon-
zales. October 13, 1835, Austin moved on
San Antonio with 3 50 men. General Cos with
five hundred Mexican regulars was in the
city since the 9th. Both waited for rein-
forcements. A small party of Texans under
Captain Smith had meantime taken Victoria,
and Goliad, capturing two or three pieces
of artillery, $10,000 in supplies and ammu-
nition, and five himdred stand of arms.

October 27, 1835, Austin sent Colonels
Bowie and James W. Fannin with ninety
men to reconnoiter. They disobeyed instruc-
tions to return before night, and encamped
at the Mission Concepcion, where they re-
pulsed an attack, defeating about four
hundred Mexicans, killing sixty-seven and
capturing a cannon with the loss of one man,
before reinforcements which Austin promptly
sent^could arrive.

November 25, 1835, Austin, having been
chosen a commissioner to solicit aid in the
United States — in which capacity he deliv-
ered the Nashville speech already quoted,
and others — resigned his commission and

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 107

was succeeded by General Edward Burleson, /
a distinguished Indian fighter, with whom
was the scout **Deaf Smith," among daring
men, skilful in wood-craft and prairie
fighting, celebrated for his pre-eminence.

Smith discovered a party of one hundred
moimted Mexicans driving some mules laden
with grass for foddering Cos' horses. He
mistook them for expected reinforcements
under Ugartchea, and thought the mules'
panniers contained silver for paying Cos'
troops. Bowie dashed out with one himdred
mounted Texans, defeated the hostile horse-
men, and a sortie from the garrison supported
by artillery; captured the mules; killed fifty
Mexicans, losing one man killed and one
missing. The affair was known as "the grass /
fight." /

These successes seem to have increased
the discontent of the Texan volunteers at
the failure to immediately carry San Antonio
by assault, and, there being no regular time
of enlistment and but lax discipline, many of
Burleson's army of about eight hundred
went home, those having families being
especially anxious for the safety of their
homes. Two companies of **Grays," fifty
men each, arrived from New Orleans, a

io8 The Mexican War

company from Mississippi, and one from
eastern Texas. A scout was missing, and
it was suspected that he had deserted to the
Mexican garrison, and would put it on the
alert for an attack; so it was decided to
raise the seige. But the scout returned
bringing in a deserter, a Mexican lieutenant,
and both reported the weakness of the
defences. Colonel Milam, who had just es-
caped from Mexico in an exhausted condi-
tion, urged Burleson to attack, and was
allowed to call for volunteers. He shouted
along the lines, **Who will go with old Ben
Milam into Antonio?" He was joined by
I CI men, who after four days' fighting drove
the Mexicans out of the city into the mission
building known as the Alamo. In this
battle the Texans pursued the tactics which
were afterward successfully adopted by the
American infantry at Monterey, as related
by General Grant in his Memoirs. They kept
in the shelter of houses, screened from
the enemy's bullets, and made their advance
from house to house, digging their way
through the walls. Some of the Mexicans
deserted and fled across the Rio Grande.
On the fifth day General Cos surrendered to
General Burleson; his troops were paroled,

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 109

and, December 14th, he set out on his retreat
with lies men, two cannon, and suJBScient
ammunition for protection of his army
against the Indians.

Such were the generous terms the Texans
actually gave to a conquered enemy, only to
be libelled by. modem historians as rough
border-men who probably treated their
foes in a manner not far different from that
of the Mexicans.

The Texan losses in their capture of the
Alamo were two killed and twenty-six
wotmded; but one of the killed was Colonel
Milam.

The Mexican loss was not reported ; but was
estimated at from one hundred to three
hundred men, twenty-one pieces of artillery,
and a large quantity of small arms and
ammunition.

December 15, 1835, there was an engage-
ment near Goliad. The post was attacked
by the Mexican garrison of Lipanititlan.
The Mexicans were defeated, compelled to
surrender, and paroled, on condition that
they leave the cotmtry and bear arms no
more against Texas.

After these had crossed the Rio Grande
there was not an armed Mexican soldier left

/

y"

iio The Mexican War

in the territory of Texas. The Rio Grande
was the boundary of Texas by conquest.*
Had the Unit'^^d States and the Texan pro-
visional government, in that state of affairs,
agreed upon terms of annexation, and United
States regulars been sent to the Rio Grande
\with orders to resist any Mexican advance
lacross that river, not a nation in Europe
could have objected that such proceedings
were not in accordance with its own best
Approved action in similar case. There would
have been abundant precedent to cite from
the record of every nation in Europe at
that date; and there has been abundant
precedent for exactly such action, with
few exceptions, in the subsequent record of
all civilized nations. It would have been a
humane and just act, protecting an infant
colony from ravage of treacherous tribes.

But those whom Schouler politely terms
**the greater harpies of the United States"
forbore to take advantage of this oppor-
tunity for expansion, although eloquently

» The surrender of San Antonio left the Mexican chief
without a single post in Texas, and consequently
terminated the campaign of 1835. — Niles, vol. i., p.
297.

A History of the People of the United States, John
Bach MacMaster, New York, 1906, vol. vi., 252.

The Lamb Assaults the Cub m

urged. Austin's argument was in their ears :

That nation of our continent will be regen-
erated ; freedom of conscience and rational liberty
will take root in that distant, and by nature
much favored, land where for ages past the upas
banner of the Inquisition, of intolerance and of
despotism, has paralyzed, and sickened, and
deadened every effort in favor of civil and re-
ligious liberty. By Americanizing Texas, Texas
will become a great outwork on the West, to
protect the outlet of this Western world, the /
mouths of the Mississippi.^

In would be diffictdt to cite any pre-
cedent of international action or any prin-
ciple of international law or ethics, which
would have been violated had the United
States yielded in 1835 to Austin's eloquent
petition, annexed Texas, and defended her
territory by force of arms.

It would not have been necessary to plead
the modem doctrines of ** effective occu-
pancy" or ** International Eminent Domain."
It would have been ample justification to
plead Mexico's absolute abandonment of
the territory, by having ceased to exercise
any jurisdiction over it, and by having

« Louisville Speech, Niles, i., p. 279.

112 The Mexican War

failed to provide any defence or any govern-
ment for it. It wotild have been ample
justification to plead the need to defend the
vested rights of American citizens, traders,
merchants, buyers of land grants. It would
have been more than justification, and a
righteous appeal to '*the higher law" that
was being appealed to for less cause, to
\ plead the determination to defend innocent
\ non-combatants, women, children, the aged,
from the fate of Zacatecas.

The United States as a nation denied
Austin's application for intervention. It
is to the credit of her people that enough of
them heard his appeal and answered it.

Texas was to win her independence in
fiercer fashion than taking shelter under
the wing of the great republic. She was
to establish her boundaries on the great
westward river by even more unmistakable
evidence than her preliminary victories.

She was a State that was to begin life with
a brilliant history.

Their early successes cost Texans dear.
Goliad and San Antonio de Bexar, with its
old mission, almost a fortress, were testi-
monials to the valor of their captors, too
valued to be cheerfully abandoned. They

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 113

commanded the routes to the settlements
whose peaceftil inhabitants, women, children,
all who were unfit for war, were hastening
eastward, pursued by a proclamation from
Mexican head-quarters at Matamora^ order-
ing Mexican troops to ** treat all foreigners
as pirates."

Goliad and San Antonio were too far apart
for mutual support, notwithstanding the
superior mobility and fighting quality of the
Texans. On the face of it, good generalship
and strategy should have concentrated on
Santa Anna, who was now advancing with
6000 to 7000 veterans, a force sufficient to
defeat and check him ; lacking such a force,
should have evacuated one of these posts and
kept open the communications of the other
with a base of supplies. But it was doubtful
whether the Texans could defeat such an
army with all the men who could be spared
from defending against Indians and flying
columns of Mexicans the non-combatants
and their necessary burden of equipment.^
All the available force for war which Texas

> ** The 700 men afterward with Houston at the Bra-
zos consisted of most of those who had not families to
remove." — History of South America^ John M. Niles,
Hartford, 1838, vol. i., p. 299.
8

114 The Mexican War

could furnish was under Houston, who had
succeeded Burleson at the front. If his
army were defeated there was nothing to
look forward to but ruin and desolation and
the horrors of Mexican mercy. Houston
ordered the evacuation of both posts. His
order to Fannin probably reached Goliad too
late. Colonel Travis and the devoted band
in the Alamo (San Antonio de Bexar) are
said to have scorned to fall back from a foe
they hated and despised. They had ample
reason to do both. They were men originally
from various localities. They were, many
of them, already noted for desperate valor
and skill in battle. There was doubtless
too much emulation for any one of them
to be willing to be the first to go back.
Some of them were admirable for little
else than a disposition to take long odds.
But they were border-men; they were
familiar with the artifice of retreating to
better position for ambuscade or flank
attack.

It is possible that, appreciating that it
would be a point of honor with Houston to
withdraw them from an extreme front he
could not wisely support, they regarded his
order as less a command to support his main

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 115

body than as a release to themselves from
an over-perilous position. The most likely-
conjecture is that they realized fully their
position and its consequences. There was,
perhaps, a faint hope that they might be
able to hold out long enough to enable
volimteers sufficient for their relief to answer
the appeal sent out by Travis; but, in full
view of the really hopeless odds, it is difficult
to doubt that they deliberately sacrificed
themselves to cover the retreat of the non-
combatants. They gave their lives for a
few days' priceless delay. ^

There were no desertions. On the con-
trary, after the place was invested a few
from Gonzales stole or fought their way into
it. The garrison numbered when first the
Alamo was surrounded 145. The number
killed was 166, probably including the five
prisoners said to have been massacred.
As to these five General Castrillo — ^whose
name should be remembered from among
the many it is a charity to forget — **inter-

» "The pause at San Antonio had afforded time for
most of the non-combatants to flee out of reach, and
thus saved Santa Anna from the consummation of his
premeditated crime of staining his hands with their
blood.*' — Niles, vol. i., p. 209.

II 6 The Mexican War

ceded for their lives, but Santa Anna turned
his back upon him and they were bayo-
neted."

It is doubtful if even the five were, strictly
speaking, massacred ; whether Castrillo, see-
ing them helpless for much mischief, did
not beg to have them overpowered and
taken alive. It is denied on good authority
that any surrendered.

Schouler says, ** Santa Anna had been
cruel at the Alamo," making the unfoimded
intimation that he had been other than
cruel elsewhere, and selecting the only battle
in his life where it is not certain that he was
cruel, or tried to be.

As a matter of fact there was little to
complain of, comparatively, at the taking
of the Alamo — if we are to take the most
probable account. ^ At the worst there were
only five victims and they were killed before
the blood of the charging columns had time
to cool. If it was murder it was not murder
in the first degree; it was in chaud medley.
The red flag of notquarter was flying from
the nearest church tower, and a Mexican
band was playing Deguello (Cut throat) ^\^

» "Only one was left alive and he was §hot by order ^
of the chief." — Niles, vol. i., p. 329.

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 117

throughout the battle. Bowie was killed
in his bed, disabled by wounds and attended
by Mexican women who, with their colored
servant boy, were afterward protected by
a Mexican officer; but Bowie was firing his
pistols when he was killed. Crockett was
overpowered by numbers and killed; but he
was making efficient use of his clubbed
rifle to the last. Major Evans, the ordnance
officer, was killed; but he was attempting,
in accordance with previous agreement, to
fire the magazine. ^ A cannon was fired into
the long ward of the hospital, and fourteen
Texans were found dead in that ward; but
there were forty dead Mexicans at the door
of it.

** Remember the Alamo! " was not so much
a war-cry of revenge at San Jacinto a few
months later as an incentive to emulate a
valor unsurpassed.

To give any description of the details of
the battle would be to draw upon imagination
or to trust to the confused memories of two
Mexican women and a negro boy, the sole
survivors, who were fully occupied in the care
of the wounded. Why no authorized report

> History of Texas, H. Yoakum, New York, 1856, vol.
ii., p. 81.

II 8 The Mexican War

of the battle can be given is plain from
the ** haughty epitaph" graven on the
monument to its heroes: ** Thermopylae had
its messenger of defeat. The Alamo had
none."

Goliad was a far more shameful affair to
Santa Anna, to General Urrea and to the
Mexican arms than was the Alamo.

After two or three skirmishes in which
Fannin's volunteers, mostly from the United
States, were outnumbered and defeated, the
prisoners and wounded had been butchered
by express orders from General Urrea —
whose name must be remembered for future
uses — and from Santa Anna in person. Gen-
eral orders also of Santa Anna and his crea-
ture, the Mexican Congress, were to treat
all foreigners under arms as pirates. General
Urrea had 900 to 1000 troops, reinforced by
sixty-six paroled Mexicans who broke their
parole and joined him. Colonel Fannin, a
Georgia volunteer, had evacuated Goliad
under orders to join Houston, and with 350
men and nine field-pieces was surrounded in
the prairie.

A hundred Campeachy Indians increased
the Mexican force. Their skill in keeping
cover and their excellent rifle practice did

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 119

much to harass the Texans, who, however,
reptilsed the first day's attack, and would
probably have made good their march to
join Houston had they not been encumbered
with sixty wounded, whom they refused to
abandon to butchery. Thus much his bar-
barity helped Santa Anna's strategy.

On the second day the Mexicans were seen
to be reinforced by 300 to 400 troops, two
pieces of artillery, and 100 pack mules with
ammunition and supplies. Without food,
water, or ammunition, the Texans surrendered
on written conditions, signed in triplicate,
of being treated according to the usages of
civilized nations, the wounded to be cared
for, the rest paroled not to serve during the
war. By express orders of Urrea and Santa
Anna they were all shot or bayoneted with
the exception of twenty-seven who escaped
to the woods. Three hundred and twenty
men died in this massacre. The wounded
were butchered in their beds in the hos-
pital. That the bodies were collected
and burned was no harm to anybody but
those who did it. Williams well says of
the whole transaction, ** It was a blunder
as well as a crime." There were Mex-
icans who were shocked at such barbar-

I20 The Mexican War

ity; and Santa Anna was to hear at San
Jacinto the terrible war-cry ** Remember
la Bahia!"

The excitement in the United States on
the receipt of news of this slaughter was,
of course, intense. Had General Gaines
been ordered at once across the Sabine, the
relatives of the slaughtered men would have
been reconciled to the invasion of Mexican
prerogatives; and there might have been
justification for the comment of the his-
torian that ** Jackson helped Houston's
strategy."

Houston had perhaps distrusted too much
the quality of his forces. Justly or unjustly
he was greatly blamed by many in his com-
mand; and by his personal enemies, who
were never few, he was accused of personal
cowardice. But it is impossible for a review
to blame him for retreating with an undis-
ciplined body of recruits before a fivefold-
outnumbering army of veterans. He was
covering the flight of women and children,
while his numbers were depleted by the
going home of men who had families, to
help them toward Nacogdoches. His sup-
ply train also was crippled for lack of the
wagons he had lent the fugitives.

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 121

Moreover he was outflanked and his rear
already threatened. Santa Anna crossed
the Brazos with 1500 men to prevent re-
inforcements to Houston and cut off his
retreat.^

Santa Anna was now proclaiming him-
self more loudly than ever '*the Napoleon oi^
the West." It takes time and long marches
to overrun a country like Texas, however;
and the Mexican army was making quicker
work of it by dividing into three columns,
to carry devastation faster. Houston had
by the superior mobility of his hungry army
got across the Brazos in time to keep Nacog-
doches covered, and now he was accused of
trying to bring the Mexicans into collision
with Gaines's United States troops at the
Sabine.

There would seem to be obvious fatuity
in Santa Anna's pushing with his column
toward Galveston Bay. He had no fleet
there to support a new base. He seems to
have become infatuated with his own great-
ness and his eagerness to destroy the Texan
civil authorities. He had information that
they were in session at Harrisburgh, and

« Niles, vol. i., p. 209.

122 The Mexican War

made a rapid march to that place. They
had escaped him; but he burned the town
and turning northward advanced to the
San Jacinto River — ^the Holy Hyacinth, the
water-flower.

It would seem that Houston, with so
mobile a force as Texan volimteers, should
have been able to take Cos and Sesma's
columns in detail before a junction with
Santa Anna could be effected. Cos had
broken his parole — ^probably his men with
him — ^and was now in the field. Santa
Anna had managed to be heavily reinforced,
however, and had 1500 troops with him
when he reached Buffalo Bayou.

A smaller stream, Vince's Bayou, with
Buffalo Bayou, the San Jacinto, and their
adjacent swamps, form what is practically
an island, approachable only, and with
difficulty, by boats (of which there were
none) or by the bridge over Vince's Bayou.
After taking position on this island, Santa
Anna did not even defend the bridge. He
must have had confidence enough in his
double numbers of veterans to be desirous
of getting the Texans where they could not
escape him. Had the Texans taken the
defensive at the bridge, they could have

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 123

starved him out or forced him to attack at
insuperable disadvantage; only that would
have set free Cos and Filisola to plunder
and ravage their homes.

Marches and counter-marches had con-
sumed a year. It was now April 21, 1836.
Houston's senior officers advised waiting
the Mexican assault. His army numbered
743. Santa Anna's forces were 1500 veterans
behind a barricade. The impatience of the
Texan troops to finish the war and get
home was what, probably, determined the
attack. Deaf Smith, it is said, was sent
back to cut down the bridge over Vince's
Bayou, and as line was formed for the
charge word was passed, ** The bridge is
down; you must fight for your lives."
No incentive was needed; but it was
desirable that the Mexicans should not
escape.

The Texans had been in a belt of timber.
As they advanced out of it — the rifle at
trail, the bowie knife in the teeth or loose
in the belt, the blood of the border at fever
heat — came the touch of comedy which
seems to relieve all tragedy — for the reader.
The Texan band consisted of one drum
and one fife; it struck up:

124

The Mexican War

i

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te*

m

#

¥-^

¥-¥■

Will you come to the bow'r I have shaded for yon?

t f ri c x^^i^^'^'i : ;^/ ! ^* '

Your bed shall be ros - es be-span-gled with dew.

f,^jj'j'r i j-J'J:f%^ ^

i

Will you, will you, will yon, will you come to the bow'r ?

tefr

^^

w

w=w^

v->-

¥-¥■

Will yoUy will yon, will yon, will you come to the bow'r ?

The **twin sisters," two howitzers, a pre-
sent from citizens of Cincinnati, discharged
a volley of stones and iron scrap into the
barricade; the Texans halted at close range,
fired once, the band played "Yankee Doo-
dle,'* ^ and they dashed forward with cries
of * * Remember the Alamo ! " * * Remember la
Bahia!" The battle of San Jacinto had
begun.

Before nightfall the Mexican army was
annihilated. With the loss of six killed and
twenty-five wounded, the Texans had killed
630 of their foes, woimded 208, and taken

' So reported to Professor Garrison.

\

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 125

730 prisoners (including the wounded) , with
their baggage, camp equipage, 900 English
or Spanish muskets, 300 sabres, 200 pistols,
300 mules, and $12,000 in specie. One half
of the money was promptly contributed to
the relief of suffering non-combatants or the
navy; the other half was distributed in pay
to the victorious soldiers — ^about $8.00 each
for a year's campaign.

Santa Anna had fled, but was pursued and
captured within a day or two.

His immediate execution for murder was,
of course, strenuously demanded; but for
purposes of civil and diplomatic advantage
his was a very valuable life.

There was a nominal congress in Mexico,
but it was well known to be only the poorest
creature of the despot's will, and Santa
Anna was that despot. He readily entered
into treaty to save his life.

"He was in duress." But the conquered
are always in duress. The treaty of Ve-
lasco was signed May 14, 1836, between/^
the Texan government and the government
of Mexico — to wit Santa Anna. Hostilities
were to cease, prisoners to be exchanged,
all Mexican troops to be withdrawn beyond
the Rio Grande, indemnity to be paid by

126 The Mexican War

Mexico, Texan independence acknowledged,
with the boundary not beyond the Rio Grande;^
the latter clause to be kept secret at Santa
Anna's suggestion, lest it be repudiated by
the Mexican Government before he could
arrive home.

This agreement of secrecy enabled Santa
Anna to keep up a show of his life being
of importance to his captors, who sent him
back to Mexico, where he promptly resumed
autocratic power; and the treaty was as
promptly abrogated, so far as one party to
a treaty can ignore it. Of its binding the
Mexican Government, Senator Rusk after-
ward summed up the situation perfectly
when he said, '*A11 the Mexican Government
which was in existence at the time [of the
treaty of Velasco] was in Burleson's baggage
train, prisoner of war.**

• General Filisola, the Mexican second in
command in the field, accepted the terms
of the treaty, and marched 4000 troops
across the Rio Grande to Matamoras in
wretched condition. The conditions were
precisely the same as those under which
the United States had recognized the

» Southwestward Extension, George Pierce Garrison,
New York, 1906, p. 206.

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 127

independence of Mexico, only that General
O'Donoju was not the Spanish Govern-
ment.

There was never thereafter a serious
attempt of Mexico to renew the invasion of /
Texas or of any of the territory on the/
Texan side of the Rio Grande. ^

Her internal feuds were alone sufficient
to account for Mexico being in too reduced
a condition to defend even her nearer
provinces from Indian raids. The few Indian-
and Mexican raids afterward made into the
territory on the Texan side of the Rio
Grande were promptly repulsed; every mil-
itary post in that territory remained in
Texan possession, and the boundary claimed
and conceded, at least by implication, in the
treaty of Velasco was successfully defended,
although the raids by Indians incited by
Mexicans were a constant drain on the
resources of the young republic. After the

t" As to the possibility of its [Texas'] reconquest and
loss of the national status it had gained, that was too
slight to be taken seriously into consideration at all."
— Texas, A Contest of Civilizations^ George Pierce
Garrison, Boston, 1903, p. 262.

" It was evident that Mexico would never recover
this territory." — History of the War with Mexico,
Horatio O. Ladd, New York, 1883, p. 24.

/

128 The Mexican War

battle of San Jacinto there was but a single
engagement to complete the victorious cam-
paign which drove the Mexicans to Mata-
moras. Captain Isaac W. Burton, who
appears to have been the only Texan com-
mander not a colonel or a general, captured
three vessels at Capano with supplies valued
at $25,000. His force consisted of twenty
mounted rangers who for their success re-
ceived the title of '* Horse Marines," a term
very frequent in the slang of the period for a
while after.

Houston was installed President of Texas
October 2 2d. He made Austin Secretary
of State. Smith, his other competitor for
the presidency, he appointed to the Treas-
ury; Colonel William H. Wharton Minis-
\ ter, and Memucan Hunt Commissioner,
to the United States; who at once urged
recognition. This was violently opposed
by Mexico and by many anti-slavery poli-
ticians. Williams says, '* The majority
of the people of the United States were in
favor of it." Judging from later events,
from the sympathy which had naturally
been elicited by the battles in Texas, in
which their own kin had participated, and
from the ownership throughout the coimtry

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 129

of many shares of ** land-scrip'* — ^issued by
corporations holding, or claiming to hold,
lands in Texas, and from the election of
Polk eight years later, Williams' opinion
would seem to be justified.

Shipping interests, too, particularly of
New Orleans and the gulf ports, would be
served by bringing under United States
laws, and power to enforce laws, the pirate-
haunted islands of the Texan coast.

Jackson has been blamed for haste in
Texan recognition. He did not at first
display any undue ardor in that direction.
In his message to Congress December 21st
he said:

Prudence would dictate that the United States
should stand aloof until the independence of
Texas had been recognized by Mexico or one
of the great foreign powers, or until events
should have proved beyond dispute the abil-
ity of the people to maintain their independent
sovereignty.^

He expressed, however, his willingness to
trust the discretion of Congress. This was
for Jackson a very tame treatment of an
exciting subject. Sumner, and others with

» Message to Congress, Dec. 21, 1836.
9

I30 The Mexican War

I him, have harbored the suspicion that

/delays were ingeniously fostered for the

/ purpose of letting affairs with Mexico get

I into such a tangle as would result in

/the United States having a pretext for

/j the acquisition of both Texas and Cali-

/ fomia.

It is easy to prophesy after the event.
Results may have given an air of probability
to the theory; but it does not follow that,
whatever the shrewdness of the Southern
politicians, the United States as a nation
disgraced herself by her formal forbearance.
It is not necessary for even the most vin-
dictive of biographers to impeach **01d
Hickory's " motives. He was not incapable
of generosity to a fallen enemy — ^at least
if it happened that the fallen enemy was
the enemy of somebody other than himself ;
and for a while after the battle of San Jacinto,
in spite of protestation and bluster, Mexico
appeared to be quite prostrate before the
Texan prowess — an object of pity, unable,
as she was, to establish a stable government
\ or to defend her towns from Indian ravages.
(After the battle of San Jacinto and the
.' peace of Velasco, it would surely have been
; within the rights of the United States as

The Lamb Assaults the Cub 131

\ defined by any international obligations to
have annexed Texas at her request with
the boundary of the Rio Grande. But the
wolf forbore.

CHAPTER VIII

RECOGNITION

IT may be doubted that conjecture is a
profitable occupation for historians. But
if amusement is to be afforded by guessing
at Jackson's motives for advising delay of
recognition of the independent republic of
Texas, in his message December 21, 1836,
it is not needful to confine the imagination to
the theory that it was to serve the purposes
of slave-holding or other territorial aggrand-
izement. Now that the heat of war had sub-
sided, and calmer deliberations as to what
were their practical interests were occupying
Texan councils, doubts may have come to the
surface of their ability to hold, or their
profit in holding, dominion over the ** herds
of wild horses" beyond the Nueces, or
undertaking the policing of the few Mexicans
who remained in the settlements northeast
of the Rio Grande.

133

Recognition 133

It was like Jackson to be impetuous, and to
be intolerant of delay; but it was also like
Jackson to be shrewd, and to wait behind
his breastworks for his Pakenhams. He had
had his experiences with Calhoun as friend
and foe; Martin Van Buren had been his
associate as Vice-President and as Secretary
of State; Edward Livingston, Louis McLane,
and John Forsyth had advised him in
foreign relations. He was planning, and
effecting, the unique political success of
naming the President who was to follow him
into power. 1 It was uncertain, too, how
many Votes could be secured for recognition.
There may have been a better chance of
securing reluctant votes by coyness and
deliberation.

Then there was a claim for a Texan
boundary far into the water-shed of the upper
Rio del Norte, which included much of what
is now New Mexico, and to secure which the
United States eventually paid Texas's nat-
ional debt. There could hardly have failed
to be some hesitating Senators who hoped
to narrow the demands of Texas for property

» ** His last political victory — ^the election of Van
Buren — was his greatest." — Jacksonian Democracy,
William MacDonald, New York, 1906, p. 309.

134 The Mexican War

so far encroaching the supposed limits of
the Louisiana purchase — or of Mexico. The
embarrassments of such questions and the
difficulties attendant on attempting, even,
such surveys as might tend to their solu-
tion, became at a later date quite apparent.

If Texas, on the whole, were satisfied with
a boundary on the Nueces, votes were likely
to be gained, and questions of property about
Santa F6 postponed or settled.

Whatever the motives or plans, the Texas
Legislature, December 19, 1836, passed a res-
\ olution declaring the Rio Grande to be the

western boundary of Texas. As this was two
days earlier than Jackson's message recom-
mending delay it is not likely, when the slow
mails of the day are considered, that either
of the two influenced the other very much.

Texas stood by the rights she claimed
under the treaty of Velasco, and the bound-
ary she had established by battle.

Jackson may have had undisclosed opinions
and been privy to any number of conspira-
cies to breed wars and obtain Califomias,
for all the possibility of proving a general
negative; but what he did was sufficiently
straightforward.

He reported the Texas resolution Decem-

Recognition 135

ber 22(3, and "pointed out distinctly that in
taking Texas the United States would take
her with her new [!] boundary claims."*
Of this Sumner says:

That is as if Maine were to secede . . . claim-
ing for her boundaries the Alleghenies and the
Potomac, join Canada, and then England claim
the New England and Middle States. . . . The
policy was to keep the Texas question open until
California could be obtained.** 2

Sumner anticipates at this point the
whole question of annexation; but it is as
well to meet his imagination here as later.
If Maine were supposed to have driven the
armies of the United States across the
Alleghenies and the Potomac, and com-
pelled a treaty to stay there, and enforced
compliance with that provision of the treaty,
the comparison would not be without a
show of semblance — as it now is.

Professor Theodore Salisbury Woolsey,
Yale University, while recognizing that the
territory acquired was "essential to our
symmetrical development," stigmatizes the
Mexican war as unjust and the recognition of

> Andrew Jackson, William Graham Sumner, Boston,
1882, p. 357.

^Ibid.

136 The Mexican War

Texan independence as **premature"*; but,
when he gets down to the fund of learning he
unquestionably possesses in his own specialty
of international law, he gives three justifying
reasons for the intervention of the United
States in liberating Cuba:

The burden of neutrality; the dictates of our
commercial interests; the call of humanity. Any
one of these is strong; together they are veiy
nearly convincing.^

Connecticut was not of Professor Woolsey's
opinion as to the prematurity of the recog-
nition of Texas, March 27, 1836, at its first
session after the slaughter at Goliad and the
Alamo, and while the Texans were falling
back toward San Jacinto, the Connecticut
Legislature passed a resolution instructing the
Senators and Representatives from the State
to use their best endeavors to procure the ac-
knowledgment of the independence of Texas.
Many other States passed similar resolutions.^

» American Foreign Policy ^ Theodore Salisbury
Woolsey, New York, 1898, pp. 11-16 and 120.

» Ibid.t pp. 64-65.

3 The Connecticut resolutions were presented by
Senator Niles, June 13, 1836. The Ohio and Penn-
sylvania resolutions, to the same effect, were referred to
the Committee on Foreign Relations. — Senate Journal.

Recognition 137

No Senators in 1837 took Professor Wool-
sey's view. Mr. Schurz seems to differ with
him.

March i, 1837, the resolution recognizing
Texas as an independent nation was passed
by Congress and Jackson signed it.^

At the last hour of the session a clause was
inserted in the civil appropriation bill, and
•passed both houses, providing for the pay-
ment of a diplomatic agent to the Republic
of Texas whenever the President should
receive satisfactory evidence that Texas was
an independent power, and deemed it ex-
pedient to appoint such a minister. ** Jack-
son immediately signed the bill.'* Certainly
the civil appropriation bill must be signed
if a new administration was to be comfort-
able. Jackson appointed the new minister,
and the appointment was confirmed by the
Senate. 2

There is of course a surface appearance of
haste in such disposition of a matter of inter-

« "Clay was in no haste in reporting from the Com-
mittee on Foreign Relations the resolution for recogni-
tion, and it passed the Senate by a unanimous vote."
— Henry Clay, Carl Schurz (Boston, 1887), vol. ii., pp.
91-92.

2 History of the United States, James Schouler, Bos-
ton, 1889, ^^^' ^^'^ P- ^5^'

138 The Mexican War

national importaace. But there was no haste
at all differing from what is usual, or even
without exception, at the end of a Con-
gressional session. It did not hurry official
business in the closing hours of an admin-
istration as had Adams* long list of ap-
pointments in anticipation of party change.
Prematurity is to be inferred less from rapid
action at the end of a period than from giv-
ing too little time and thought to the consid-
eration of the action.

If a new administration and a new con-
gress were not to be saddled with a vexatious
question which had already been well threshed
out, certainly the last hour of the session
was not too early for deciding it.

Without comparison of dates, but in view
of the progress of events, the recognition of
Texas, in consideration of her relations to
Mexico, had been delayed longer than the
recognition of Mexico in consideration of
her relations to Spain. Spain held impor-
tant military posts, and ports where her
formidable navy could cover the disembarka-
tion of comparatively great military forces —
of which she later availed herself — ^when the
United States, in spite of Spain's protests,
recognized the independence of Mexico. In

Recognition 139

1837 every military post and every port in
Texas was in the hands or power of the
Texans.

The Republic of Cuba was recognized
when the Spaniards held possession of
everything on the island but the thickets,
and surrounded its coast with their fleets.

The treaty between Mexico and Spain, on
the faith of which the United States had
recognized the Republic of Mexico, had been
signed on the part of Spain by General
O'Donaju only, her commander in the field,
without the approval of his government.
The treaty of Velasco had been consented
to and acted upon by all of Mexico's gen-
erals in the different departments in Texas
and by the only government she actually
possessed.

The terms agreed upon between Grant and
Lee at Appomatox were respected as re-
ligiously as if a formal treaty.

Other republics have been from time to
time recognized in which the suzerain had a
better fighting chance than the Mexican
outlook in Texas at the time of her
recognition.

Judged as a mere question of difference in
dates, too, many a new de facto government

140 The Mexican War

has been received into the brotherhcwDd of
nations after a coup d'etat, or a removal of a
head — or two — or more — ^with more speed
than Texas.

Hawaii was not kept waiting so long — ^nor
Panama.

The date of the treaty of Velasco (by
which the only government of Mexico —
that **in Burleson's baggage train" — ^had
recognized Texan independence) was May 14,
1836. To March i, 1837, the date of recogni-
tion of Texas by the United States, the
interval was nine months and eighteen days;
and it is diffictilt to perceive why the pro-
fessors should regard that as an abnormally
brief period of incubation.

There was no great reason for waiting to
learn the boundaries of Texas.

The acquisition of California had not yet
become a pressing political question. It is
hardly credible that Jackson was in a con-
spiracy to force a war to obtain a footing on
the Pacific coast.

The boundary of Texas was made the Rio
Grande in the treaty of Velasco by implication,
if not in terms. ^ Treaty or no treaty, that

» " A condition of the treaty of Velasco was the es-
tablishment of the Rio Grande as a boundary." — Sam

Recognition 141

boundary had been enforced: the Texan
Congress had insisted on it; Jackson had
advised the United State Congress of the
insistence; and after the resolution of recog-
nition had passed there was no reason
for any official of the United States, in the
observance of neutral relations, to question
that boundary. Texan independence was
recognized by other powers. And the recog-
nition of Texas by the United States, was
timely, definite as to the Rio Grande bound-
ary, and conclusive.

Houston and the War of Independence in Texas,
Alfred M. Williams (Boston, 1893), pp. 209-211.

Henry M. Morfitt, American agent in Texas, to Sec-
retary of State, Aug. 27, 1836: **The Rio Grande was
made the boimdary by implication, as Article III. of
the agreement stipulates that the Mexican troops
should evacuate the territory cf Texas, passing to
the other side of the Rio Grande del Norte.'* — British
and Foreign State Papers^ London, 1853, vol. 25, p.
1365.

CHAPTER IX

MIXED MOTIVES

THE opinion expressed as to the causes
of the Mexican War by the mass of
historians is given more definite shape,
perhaps, than by any other, by Mr. Ladd,
who says in italics: ** The potent cause and
ruling motive of the war with Mexico was the
purpose to extend human slavery into free
territory'' But he admires **the forbearance
which citizens of the United States had long
extended to the Mexicans." ^

Carl Schurz gives four ** ostensible grounds
for war**: ''annexation, claims, the boundary
line, the rejection of a minister,** but says
that **the course of the administration in
its dealings with Mexico was such as can
scarcely be explained on any other theory
than that it desired to bring on a war.**

> History of the War with Mexico, Horatio O. Ladd,
New York, 1883, p. 29.

143

Mixed Motives 143

The motives and reasons for annexation
of Texas and for war with Mexico because
of it, or independently of it, are not so
simple and uninvolved as from this brief
generalization would be inferred. They are
numerous, and so interlaced, interdependent,
and yet contradictory of each other, as to
form a chapter in history than which it is
hardly possible to imagine one fuller of
intricacy and difficulty. It is not improb-
able that it is in avoidance of this difficulty,
along the line of least resistance, that his-
torians have with so great an approach to
unanimity attributed it all to a slavery
cabal. Brief histories and biographies nat-
urally accept a short cut. Philosophical
historians in love with a priori reasoning
seem to be almost irresistibly drawn into
attributing effects to a single dominant
cause.

That there was a large slave-holding inter-\
est, under the leadership of Calhoun, which;
favored extension toward the southwest;
has never been and cannot be questioned;'
its methods were shrewd but direct, earnest,/
and so obvious as to have been deservedly
denounced as domineering. The slave-hold-
ers undoubtedly took advantage, with great

144 The Mexican War

political skill, of everjrthing which tended
to elicit popular favor for their projects.

But, whatever their justly famed political
ability in taking advantage of circumstances,
their power had limitations. They did not
and could not create the conditions; they
found them existing, and only controlled
results as far as possible. And, since many
of their official acts have been damned with
opprobrium for their alleged disregard of
formal good manners and diplomatic decen-
cies, it is necessary to remember that the
political skill and experience which were jeal-
ously recognized and bitterly regretted by
their opponents constituted in themselves al-
most a guarantee that no mistakes in the for-
mality of the official acts for which they were
responsible would be allowed to endanger
their popular standing. And it would be
unjust not to credit the pro-slavery faction
with much patriotic and personal pride.

A faction did not control events. The
remark of John Quincy Adams that **The
question of the right of search, Oregon occu-
pation, the Jones landing in California, and
the movement for the annexation of Texas
were a part of one great system, looking
for a war of conquest and plunder," was

Mixed Motives 145

answered by Webster: **He was wrong in
all this/'

Upshur lost his own temper in repelling
Adams* charges against the Department of
State, in which he had succeeded Webster,
saying: ** The old man has nothing of his
former strength left but his passions; his
whole letter [November 5, 1842] is a tissue
of malignant misrepresentations." ^

President Tyler's Texas message declares,
**No intrigue has been set on foot to accom-
plish annexation." 2

** In Von Hoist everything is twisted and
distorted in the worst possible degree." 3

The faction of slavery extensionists found
allies and weapons in the reactions from the
infatuation of their most radical opponents.
The American Anti-Slavery Society, after
years of vague threats, passed a resolution
in May, 1844, that **the abolitionists make it
one of the primary objects of their agitation
to dissolve the American Union." *

There was a plot disclosed, to induce the

^Letters and Times of the Tylers , Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 268.
a Ihid., p. 323.
« Ibid., p. 268.
^Ibid., p. 274, quoting Niles Register^ Ixvi., p. 192.

146 The Mexican War

interference of Great Britain to effect the
emancipation of slaves in Texas and guar-
antee Texan independence; to which Adams
bade Grodspeed.^

Many a hater of slavery wotild refuse to
ally himself with a party of disunion, or
with one which would be willing to see
British influences predominate in a new and
near quarter of the continent.

The gradual emancipationists of the South
were advocates of slavery extension. Their
reasoning was precisely the opposite of that
of the Freesoilers who, in later days, would
strangle the institution by constriction; they
proposed to modify it, and eventually dispose
of it, by a process of dilution.

The birth-rate among slaves does not
seem to have entered as a factor into their
calculations; but there is no reason for im-
peaching their honesty.

If the purest patriots, like Jefferson and
Madison, could believe in the doctrine of a diffu-
sion of slaves as the open sesame of emancipa-
tion, it was not impossible for an abolitionist
to suppose that President Tyler really believed
that the addition of Texas, with its fine cotton

» Letters and Times of the Tylers y p. 275, quoting
Adams* Memoirs , xi., p. 380.

Mixed Motives 147

fields inviting slave-labor from the old States,
would hasten the period of emancipation in
Virginia.*

Whatever may have been the processes of
reasoning of the gradual emancipationists,
they and most Southern statesmen and
influential men were for annexation.

With the exception of the contest of
Jackson with the United States Bank, no
issue had probably brought a more formidable
lobby to Washington than that which urged
Texan annexation, nor one more deeply
interested by reason of money considerations.
** During the debates in the Senate as late as
1844 the lobbies were crowded with spec-
ulators in Texan scrip and lands." 2 Among
the speculators were land companies in New
York, and the Rio Grande Company.^

The lobby was not a rich nor a talented^
one, and is not likely to have greatly influ-
enced results at Washington, however much
the distribution of the land-scrip among

« Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 355.

2 History of the United States, James Ford Rhodes,
New York, 1900, vol. i., p. 81.

« Thirty Years View, Thomas H. Benton, New York.
1854, vol. ii., p. 623.

148 The Mexican War

many holders may have influenced a pop-
ular election. The chief importance of the
scripholders is to be looked for in having
gained some votes for Polk.

Several writers have laid much stress on
the readiness of a large class of the American
I people to be enthusiastic about ** manifest
' destiny, " and a readiness to encroach on the
rights of others in ** following the star of the
nation's destiny.** If anything of such im-
pulse is discoverable in concrete results, it is
not to be found often or easily in diplomatic
action. If traceable in affairs with Mexico it
/ must be found in election excitements and
declamations. It may have served to gather
a few votes, but it is not a ponderable force.
A summary of the considerations moving
for the annexation of Texas was presented
to the United States Senate, April 22, 1844, in
executive session, in a secret message from
President Tyler, ^ couched in his usual delib-
erate and moderate language and preserving
a friendly tone toward Mexico.

Texas, for reasons deemed sufficient by herself,
threw off her dependence on Mexico as far back
as 1836, and consummated her independence

» 28th Congress, ist session, '* Documents from which
the seal of secrecy has been removed." Doc. 2 7 6, p. 9.

Mixed Motives 149

by the battle of San Jacinto in the same year,
since which period Mexico has attempted no
serious invasion of her territory; but the
contest has assumed features of a mere
border war, characteriased by acts revolting to
humanity.

In 1836 Texas adopted her constitution,
under which she has existed as a sovereign
power since having been recognized as such by
many of the principal powers of the world; and,
contemporaneously with its adoption by a
solemn vote of her people, embracing all her
population but ninety-three persons, declared
her anxious desire to be admitted into associa-
tion with the United States. . . . This course
has been adopted by her without the employ-
ment of any sinister measures on the part of
this government. No intrigue has been set on
foot to accomplish it.

The message sets forth certain dangers in re-
fusal, such as smuggling, hostility of Texans,
raids of Indians from a territory not accessible
to our arms or policing, loss of trade, the
submission of Texas to some other Power.

It is not to be believed that a man of
Tyler's unquestionable integrity, and an
independence of character such that he had
not hesitated to vote in a minority of one in a

ISO The Mexican War

case of conscience, 1 should have misstated
the position willingly to the Senate, his
colleague in the treaty-making power. And
it is not probable that a statesman of his
experience made any serious error in his
presentation of facts.

He viewed the matter as **an American
and not a Southern question." 2

If any speculators in Texas stocks have
counselled, much less impelled, me to action upon
that subject, I declare myself to be wholly
ignorant of that fact. The plain truth is that
I saw nothing but the country, and the whole
country ; not this or that section, this or that local
interest, but the whole — ^the good, the strength,
the glory of the whole country in the measure.^

Or, as Professor Woolsey says, ** something
essential to our symmetrical development.*'
Webster, Clay, and Tyler endeavored to
keep the solution of the Texan question out
of politics.*

1 " The Force Bill," Jacksonian Democracy, William
MacDonald, New York, 1906, p. 164.

^Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., pp. 422-423.

3 Ibid. p. 425, Letter to Richmond Enquirer.

«**It was necessary for the success of the scheme
that the question, above all, should not become a party
one." — Ibid., p. 278.

Mixed Motives 151

Clay considered slavery to be a strictly
temporary institution, which would soon be
overthrown by the laws of population. ^

The advantage to trade in controlling
Texan ports is obvious from the cotton
monopoly, from the conformation of her
coast — the shelter offered to pirates and
smugglers by her sounds and inlets.

The complication of the question of
Texas with that of Oregon, and general
access to the Pacific, cannot be either over-
estimated or altogether imravelled.

At another period annexationists would
naturally have pulled together to land a
double prize. The Democrats did join the
political war-cry of ** re-annexation," with
** fifty-four, forty, or fight,*' and won out;
but whether by virtue of the combination,
the alliteration — cited longer and wider than
the Reverend Burchard's **Rum, Romanism,
and Rebellion " — or the division among their
opponents, cannot be computed with any-
thing approaching to exactness.

How many votes were lost to the Demo-
cracy in the South by the prospect of a great

> Life of Henry Clay, Carl Schurz, Boston, 1887,
vol. ii., p. 260-1, Letter of Clay to Stephen F. Miller,
Tuscaloosa, July 27, 1844.

152 The Mexican War

increase in Northern territory? How many
everywhere by the danger of two wars at a
time?

How many votes were capttired by an out-
look for cotton monopoly and cheap lands in
Texas? How many by the vision of ports
on the Pacific? Daniel Webster had said,
**The port of San Francisco is twenty times
as valuable to us as all Texas." ^

How many American whalers and ship-
owners, how many of the settlers pushing
out over the trails of Lewis and Clark, how
many owning lands or whose brothers and
sons were among the pioneers in Oregon,
were supporting a policy of expansion ? Such
questions cannot be answered with exactness.
No census or election returns can be relied
on for figures. A close analysis of the votes
in some State elections and in the election
of President might give reasonably close
approximations; but these influences on the
solution of questions with Mexico are not
quite ascertainable and are at best remote.

Nearer and more powerful impulses for
curt dealing with Mexico, but, nevertheless,
influences incapable of measurement, were

* Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 264.

Mixed Motives 153

kinship with the Texan population, or a great
and controlling part of it, and intense syrn-
pathy for their wrongs, coincident with no less
intense indignation at Mexican barbarities.

From 1836 until 1845 ''Remember the
Alamo'* — which more reasonably should
have read ** Remember Goliad'* (la Bahia) —
meant as much to a vast number of American
citizens as, within a decade, ** Remember
the Maine'' meant to their descendants, and
with much more certainty that the ven-
geance invoked was not misplaced.

It would seem to be highly probable that,
instead of slavery extension having been the
prime factor in inducing annexation and
war with Mexico, had it not been for the
slavery question Texas would have been
annexed, the pirates of her coast sunk or
hung, her grand agricultural wealth ex-
ploited, and Mexican and Indian atrocities
suppressed by the power of the great republic,
immediately after the slaughter at Goliad.*

One of the series of incidents which un-

***The wonder is not that there were occasional
emigrations and subscription of funds, but that there
was not an open and direct intervention by our people.
The ludicrous part of the business was that the greatest
complaints came from the very men who proclaimed
the higher law against slavery." — Letters and Times of

154 The Mexican War

doubtedly tended to delay annexation was
the contention between the two houses
of Congress as to their constitutional pre-
rogatives. Niles, as we have already noticed,
had been reluctant on account of constitu-
tional scruples. Benton objected to the
acquisition of Texas by treaty, instead of a
treaty based on legislative action, as in the
case of Louisiana and Florida; ** by treaty
covertly conceived and carried on with all the
features of an intrigue, and in flagrant violation
of the principles and usages of government.*'^
He insisted that immediate annexation was
made to serve a political scheme to weaken
Van Buren and make Calhoun President by
throwing the election into the House. ^
February 14, 1845, annexation was effected

the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol.
ii., p. 257.

Since editing The American Nation, Professor Hart
has materially changed his views as to the slavery-
extension cause of the war, and now says: *'The
annexation of Texas was logical and delayed only
by the accidental connection with slavery." — National
Ideas Historically Traced, Albert Bushnell Hart, New
York, 1907, p. 26.

1 Thirty Years View, Thomas H. Benton, New York,
1854, p. 600.

2 Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 581-599.

*'The power of annexation by treaty had been car-

Mixed Motives 155

by joint resolution. No one can fail to
surmise that jealousy for the prerogative
of the House of Representatives was not the
sole motive for preference of that method.
A party having a majority in each house,
and lacking the requisite two thirds for
making a treaty in the Senate, would be
very apt to have its views of constitutional
obligations lean toward the method of
annexation by joint resolution — a method
originally proposed by Stephen F. Austin
and definitely described in the instructions
of J. P. Henderson, Texan Secretary of State,
to Memucan Hunt, Minister to the United
States, December 31, 1836.^

It does not follow that because of preju-
dices the method is not constitutional, nor
that it is not the best method. Since the an-
nexation of Hawaii, it will probably stand as
the generally accepted procedure.

The fact for history to concern itself about
is that the debates and scruples as to methods
of procedure were an obstacle to annexation,

ried to annexation even without treaty." — American
Political History, Alexander Johnson, New York, 1906,
pp. 71-72.

» Southwestward Extension, George Pierce Garrison,
New York, 1906, pp. 92, 93, 94.

156 The Mexican War

and probably delayed it until the people of
the United States had been heard from in
the election of Polk.

**The Texan question was, after all, the
real issue of the campaign. In this respect
Polk's position was perfectly clear." *

The question of the annexation of Texas
was the principal issue in the campaign of 1844.
And yet the Whig platform was silent upon it.
It is probable that they feared openly to oppose
a measure which had aroused the national
pride and enthusiasm. ^

There is an amusing discrepancy in the
ideas of political inheritances of adminis-
trations, as discovered by historians. The
evils of Jacksonianism were entailed by his
biographer on three subsequent administra-
tions. In concurrence with Von Hoist, Sum-
ner says, ** The Mexican War was forced on
by a Cabinet intrigue, and Tyler forced it on
Polk. ' ' ^ But Garrison accuses Tyler of antici-
pating Polk in the fruit of his victory; and

» Life of Henry Clay, Carl Schurz, Boston, 1887, vol.
ii., p. 258.

2 History of Political Parties in the United States.
James H. Hopkins, New York, 1900, p. 70.

3 Andrew Jackson, William Graham Sumner, Boston,
1882. p. 358.

Mixed Motives 157

Johnson says: ** Tyler forestalled Polk, and
leaped at the chance of ending his presidency
with the 6clat and the honor of annexation/' *
Tyler gives the inside facts. The action
of the British envoy was so full of mach-
inations to defeat annexation that delay
seemed to President Tyler to be inadmissible.

He directed Mr. Calhoun to wait upon Mr.
Polk and submit to him the instructions to our
agent in Texas. Mr. Calhoun did as he was
directed, but Mr. Polk declined any inter-
ference in the matter, and was understood by
his silence as concurring, or at least acquiescing,
in Mr. Tyler's course — ^

which was to hasten Texan acceptance of
the terms offered by the United States.

This was characteristic courtesy, on the
part of an exceptionally mannerly gentle-
man, even in the presidential oflSce.

John Tyler will always stand charged by
the larger section of an intelligent people
with the gravest political error in standing
to States' rights and the pro-slavery cause,
although himself an emancipationist.

» A Century of Expansion, William Fletcher Johnson,
New York, 1903, vol. ii., p. 71.

^Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 363.

158 The Mexican War

The charges brought against him by
modem historians and ancient fire-eaters
(who could, as he said, be found in every
section) of allowing rude and unmannerly
correspondence with Mexico, through the
Secretary of State and the diplomatic
representatives of the Government of the
United States, and so conspiring with other
Southern leaders to force a war of aggran-
dizement, must provoke a smile of deris-
ion, which perforce widens to a grin when it
is remembered that the accusation implies
that he made Daniel Webster his Secretary
of State, and employed him as his first
choice for his chief instrument in so indeco-
rous a purpose.

Nor will Mr. Tyler find himself in especially
crude and ill-mannered company when, in a
later chapter, he is brought into association
for answering the same charges with other
Secretaries of State — Martin Van Buren,
Edward Livingston, Louis McLane, John
Forsyth, Hugh S. Legar6, Abel P. Upshur,
John C. Calhoun, and James Buchanan.
Whatever other charges may be harbored
or sustained against these gentlemen, it will
require proofs of a quite unmistakable nature
to induce the belief that they were oblivious

Mixed Motives 159

of the duties or the advantages of decorum,
of parliamentary skill and diplomatic eti-
quette, or wished to write themselves down
as incapables.

The direct and finally prevailing causes
for war with Mexico — ^the concrete and meas-
urable causes — have not been touched upon
in this chapter. Those yet to be consid-
ered are more important in their results
and in the insufferable nature of their mani-
festation. They were more hopelessly un-
avoidable, and involved more enduring
interests — interests continued from a previ-
ous generation and embracing centuries of
outlook, yet neglected by philosophical his-
torians because not falling into line with
the prescribed logic of charging a wrong
to slavery extension, which has enough un-
doubted sins to answer for.

It must be noted, however, before losing
sight of the imponderable, and perhaps
sentimental, impulses or motives to war
with Mexico, that, according to Professor
Woolsey's schedule of justifying causes for
war as applied to the war for Cuban inde-
pendence, they were ample. To go to the
official record, and to an example which,
involving no constitutional questions and no

i6o The Mexican War

internal dissensions or struggle for sectional
political supremacy, received the enthusi-
astic support of the whole people of the
United States, and its underlying principle
the consent of the peoples of the world, re-
hearsing in a preamble

the abhorrent conditions in Cuba, so near our
own borders . . . which have shocked the moral
sense of the people of the United States, and
have been a disgrace to Christian civilization —
culminating in the destruction of a United
States battle-ship with two hundred and sixty-
six of its officers and crew, while on a friendly
visit in the harbor of Havana — ^and cannot
longer be endured, the Senate and House of
Representatives resolved: I. That the people of
Cuba are and of right ought to be free and
independent. II. That the Government of the
United States demands that the Government
of Spain at once relinquish its authority and
government in the island of Cuba and withdraw
its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban
waters. III. That the President be directed to
use the entire land and naval forces to carry
this resolution into effect.^

The case of Mexico in Texas differed
from that of Spain in Cuba in that:

> Joint Resolution No. 21, April 20, 1898, 30 Stats.
at Large, p. 738.

Mixed Motives 163

and which has been magnified by historians
into the great and only cause of the war —
sufficient unto itself. And the United States
for nine years refused to break the peace
with her malignant and insolent but feeble
neighbor. Twice the Senate refused to ratify
a treaty for annexation; as late as April 22,
1844, by a more than two thirds vote against
ratification, 35 to 16, while two thirds was
required to ratify. The patience and for-
bearance of a nation with **a manifest des-
tiny," the clemency of the wolf, had not
been exhausted.

CHAPTER X

CLAIMS AND CORRESPONDENCE

NO article of the impeax^hment of the
United States for her conduct toward
Mexico has been urged with bitterer in-
dignation than the alleged impositions in
preferring claims for Mexican encroach-
ments on the persons and property of Amer-
ican citizens, and the manner of their
presentation. The imsettled condition of
the Spanish and Mexican governments, the
inadequacy of their navies to crush the
pirates sheltered in the gulfs and sounds of
their coast, and the want of character in
many of their officials, military and naval,
had naturally resulted in many offensive
acts for which compensation had been de-
manded by the United States, England, and
France. That these claims were presented
by the United States in an undiplomatic
and offensive manner, is, of course, a charge
164

Claims and Correspondence 165

which should be substantiated by proofs
and specifications citing the obnoxious papers.
The charge is maintainable, if at all, by
record evidence; no other proof or opinion
is admissible; and in a matter susceptible
of record proof by citations, out of a vast
mass of official papers, there is less justifi-
cation than in any other case for putting,
or attempting to put, the defence to the
proof of a general negative. It is quite
enough answer to Mr. Schouler's phrases
**the greater harpies of the United States'*
and **a Pizarro," to observe that the manner
of the nations aggrieved by Mexican breaches
of international obligation, in enforcement of
demands for indemnity, had been this:
England had threatened to send an admiral
and his squadron, and the fugitive rebel
Mexican General Arista, from her station
in Jamaica, to make collection of her claims;
and got her payment. France sent a fleet,
battered down the castle of San Juan
d'UUoa; and got her payment.

The United States agreed to arbitrate
her claims; and eventually paid most of
them herself to such citizens as proved
claims, reserving the amount out of the sum
she paid Mexico at the close of the war.

i66 The Mexican War

Dr. Sparks and others intimate that the
claims as presented were excessive because,
while $8,000,000 were claimed, only $3,000,-
000 were eventually allowed by the commis-
sion.^ The claims were very largely for
personal injuries and detentions; the "thir-
teen revolutions" Dr. Sparks mentions as
having '* taken place in twenty years,*' and
the neighborhood of pirates, made very
great the difficulty of fixing responsibility. ^^ ^
Any young practising lawyer of C hicago,, • •
can advise the historian that forty per cent,
iis an unusually large proportional amount
jto recover of damages asked in complaints,
even in complaints sustained by judgments.
Schouler calls the spoliation claim a ** con-
venient weapon " for Jackson. Sumner says :

A correspondence now began between the
representatives of the governments of the United
States and Mexico, which no American ought to
read without shame. 2

Again:

In 1836 the Government of the United States
opened a new battery against that of Mexico in

» The United States, Edwin Earle Sparks, Part II.,
New York, 1904, p. 139.

2 Andrew Jackson, William Graham Sumner, Boston,
1882, p. 356.

Claims and Correspondence 167

the shape of a series of claims and charges. . . •
Powhatan Ellis performed his duties in such a
rude and peremptory manner that one is forced
to suspect that he acted by orders [i,e. that the
indecorum was chargeable to John Forsyth];
the charges were at first fifteen in nimiber, then
forty-six, then fifty-seven, and bear the charac-
ter of attempts to make a quarrel. Ellis ab-
ruptly came home.^

Elson goes a step further ; he says : "Jackson
even demanded damages from Mexico and
threatened reprisals, when the damage claims
should have come from the other side."
This piece of history in the face of the award
of a commission of arbitrators.

Von Hoist, Sumner's authority for im-
peaching Powhatan Ellis' manner in cor-
respondence, relying on the authority of
Jay, 2 declares: **It is rare indeed that diplo-
matic history exhibits a series of natural
complaints, so trivial in themselves, urged
with so much spleen and arrogance on the
one side, or met with so much fairness and
good temper on the other." This manner
of writing history shows one rather passion-

» Andrew Jackson, p. 358.

^A Review of the Causes and Consequences of the
Mexican War, William Jay, Boston, 1849, p. 45.

1 68 The Mexican War

ate writer quoting the opinion (no state-
ments of iacts) of another more impassioned;
he in turn quoting the opinion of one of the
partisans of the day of the questioned occur-
rences. The first bare fact alleged is, how-
ever, traced to Jay ^ who quotes Pendleton of
Virginia as authority for the statement that
there was among the claims a foolish bill for 56
dozen bottles of porter, $1690, with 6 years*
interest, $6570 ( !) , on whichMexico wasobliged
eventually to pay a total of $8260. This would
look very much like evidence of one swindle
on Mexico if it had not been thrown out. 2

Schouler continues condemnation of the
manners exhibited by our diplomatists to
the last effort (to be considered later) which
Slidell was supposed to make for averting
the war: ** Despatches more contemptuous
of a country to whom an apology was owing
were never penned." 3 Yet James Buchanan,
a peculiarly formal old gentleman (to our
sorrow as a nation, over-formal in an emer-

« A Review of the Causes and Consequences of the
Mexican War, p. 73.

2 Constitutional and Political History of the United
States, H. Von Hoist, Chicago, 1881, vol. ii., p. 606.

» History of the United States, James Schouler, Bos-
ton, 1889, vol. iv., p. 525.

Claims and Con^espondence 169

gency) , did not discover anything improper —
though Secretary of State at the time; nor
does George Ticknor Curtis in his biography.^
Carl Schurz is so impressed with the
wickedness of the United States diplomats
that he denounces it twice — ^he does not
make any specifications, nor offer any proof;
but he does quote an opinion, tracing the
phrases of blame and shame to their source:

Claims were presented to the Mexican Govern-
ment and satisfaction demanded in language so
insulting that, as John Quincy Adams said, **No
true-hearted citizen of this Union could witness
the proceeding without blushing for his country. ' ' 2

"John Quincy Adams was a master of
sarcasm and invective,'* ^ and there probably
is nothing to be found in the correspondence
in question as severe as the language he
was in the habit of addressing to his fellow-
congressmen. He called them skunks once
in his diary, if Tyler does not misquote him.

Popularity in any deep sense was denied him.

» Life of James Buchanan, George Ticknor Curtis,
vol. ii., p. 449-

2 Life of Henry Clay, Carl Schurz, vol. ii., p. 93-178.

» History of the United States, James Ford Rhodes,
New York, 1900, pp. 71-77. Note 3.

170 The Mexican War

This deprivation he repaid by harsh, vindictive,
and censorious judgments upon his contempo-
raries.^

In referring to such evidence at all as Ad-
ams* opinion, quoted by Mr. Schurz, it is not
intended to admit it as authority by any
means; nor yet to speak with any disrespect
of the fiery old debater and cunning parlia-
mentarian, on whose voice for so many
days and years rested in great measure the
defence of the right of petition and the
freedom of speech. But it is intended to
rebuke, so far as it is in the power of the
reviewer, the historians who will take a
single exasperated statement of opinion of a
passionate old man and unflinching partisan,
pass it off for historical authority, and cite
it, as if a fact, in evidence of grave official
misdemeanor. When a session of the House
of Representatives had resembled too much
a bear-bait, and the bear had kept within
parliamentary rules in cuffing back his tor-
mentors, and had come home tired and hot
and worn of temper to comfort himself with
writing in his diary, or his memoirs, what
it would have called down the Speaker's

« Rise of the New West, Frederick Judson Turner,
New York, 1906, p. 179.

X

Claims and Correspondence 171

gavel to have said in the House, is it good
research for a historian to dig down into
such papers, or his talk, or some other ex-
pression not specified, not for a fact (if John
Quincy Adams testifies anywhere that any-
thing is a fact, it is evidence enough to any-
body) , but for a bitter phrase to describe the
action of an adversary, and announce that
as the summary of a mass of unquoted
correspondence ?

So far as is disclosed by a reasonably ex-
tended and careful search, the charge by the
historians that the correspondence of the
United States with Mexico was disgraceful,
is unsupported by the citation of a single
piece of evidence;^ and it would be sufficient

1 Westward Extension^ Professor George Pierce Garri-
son, New York, 1907, p. 190, is an exception, published
since this review was written. He says Ellis* demands
on Mexico were made in a letter *'more forcible than
diplomatic " ; and he cites the House Executive Docu-
ments, 24th Congress, 2d session. No. 139, pp. 60-67, in
which I find nothing which strikes me as more "forc-
ible " than the letter of Powhatan Ellis to Monasterio,
Mexico, Oct. 20, 1836, which calls attention to note of
the 26th, ult., and says:

"In presenting so urgent a representation as he did
on that occasion of the wrongs of which his Govern-
ment has such just cause to complain, the Undersigned
indulged the hope that a returning sense of justice on
the part of the Supreme Mexican Government would

172 The Mexican War

criticism to leave the subject at this point.
But there are some interesting, disconnected
bits of evidence accessible which, while not,
perhaps, sufficient to prove a general nega-
tive, exhibit clearly enough that a veracious
historian, if not ignorant of them, should
have stated them, as indicating some ex-
ceptions at least to the broad general state-
ments above quoted.

It is necessary to the understanding and
characterization of the diplomatic correspon-
dence to know something of the claims
which were the subject of the correspondence.
These cannot well be followed in their order;
nor will brevity permit separating always
the claims and the correspondence, or re-
viewing more than a few examples.

The great, salient, and undisputed facts,
which are the main evidence as to the
question in its large scope, are that in 1837

have induced it to enter into a speedy arrangement of
all alleged causes of complaint against it; but he has
seen with regret that his expectations thus far have
not been realized. Now he has only to inform Your
Excellency that, unless redress is offered without un-
necessary delay in the several cases heretofore brought
to the notice of this Government, the longer residence of
the undersigned as the representative of the Government
of the United States near that of Mexico will be useless."

Claims and Correspondence 173

claims unadjusted had accumulated against
Mexico such and so many that Jackson had
declared *'they would justify in the eyes
of all nations immediate war,**i and the
Committee on Foreign Relations had re-
ported a resolution to Congress requir-
ing a final demand to be made for
redress.2

There had been repeated acts of violence,
robbery, and insult to the flag of the Union.
For these acts the United States Government
with great forbearance sought reparation. Not-
withstanding the most earnest remonstrances
these depredations did not cease. The frequent
changes of rulers in Mexico gave opportunity
for new outrages and seemed to remit the respon-
sibility of the Mexican Government for old ones.
The injuries and insults after the treaty of 1831
increased rather than diminished. The griev-
ances of American citizens, the hot debates
in the Mexican Congress, and the arbitrary
and insulting conduct of the Mexican officials
toward the representatives of the United States

> History of the War with Mexico ^ Horatio O. Ladd,
New York, 1883, pp. 31-35.

2 •• If the mission fails of a speedy and definite state-
ment this House will sustain the executive in any
ulterior measures which may become necessary." —
March 2, 1839, House Journal.

174 The Mexican War

were used successfully to cover the aggressive
designs of the Administration.^

Unfortunately Mr. Ladd cites no authorities
for any of his statements; and how Mexican
insults to the flag and other injuries could
be used to cover aggressive designs by the
United States, it is difficult to understand,
except as may appear from undue urgency
in collection, or orders to generals in the
field — which will be discussed in the proper
place.

Some of the dissensions arose on the Pa-
cific coast. Commodore Jones, U. S. N., with
the Pacific squadron, was ordered to take no
hostile steps, though directed '*to explore
the coast within the Gulf of California and
as high as the port of San Francisco, out of
regard to the protection necessary to the
American inhabitants in a country which
owned a nominal allegiance to Mexico.'' 2
Nominal allegiance was not attended by the
protection of actual government or policing.

Sumner is over-mild in the statement of
the number of claims presented; or the

» History of the War with Mexico, Horatio O. Ladd,
New York, 1883, p. 33.

2 Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner Tyler,
Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p, ?66,

Claims and Correspondence 175

offences were more numerous as the years
progressed. In the award of the commission
of the United States (after the war and the
assumption of payment of claims by this
government) — George Evans, Caleb B. Smith,
and Robert T. Paine, commissioners, —
transmitted by Daniel Webster, Secretary of
State, February 11, 1852, there are reported:

Claims presented . . : 292

Claims rejected for not setting forth facts
which if proved would constitute valid
claims against Mexico (viz. overruled
on demurrer) 40

252
Allowed 182

Rejected 70

The Arbitration Treaty was concluded in
1839. The term of the commission expired
in 1842, with many claims unadjusted.^

The date of final adjustment ought to be
taken as indurating great patience on the
part of the United States with Mexico. It
has been construed as part of the plot to keep
up and protract dissension until a war could
be forced, and California included in the spoils.

» Life of Henry Clay, Carl Schtirz, Boston, 1887, vol.
ii., p. 235.

176 The Mexican War

** It was suspected [sic] that they [the
claims] were purposely kept an open sore."^

At least a part of the delay was by reason of
Mexican dilatoriness — or worse. The United
States Commissioners for adjustment of
claims against Mexico — W. L. Marcy, after-
ward Secretary of State, and John Rowan,
ex-Senator from Kentucky — ^reported May
26, 1841 (Baron Roeme was appointed um-
pire by the King of Prussia), 2 that they had
proceeded to Washington July 23, 1840;
the Mexicans had not arrived, and they ad-
journed to August 17th. The Mexicans then
insisted that the claims should be presented
not by individual claimants but by the
State Department of the United States; and
they were then so presented. Requisitions
were made on the Mexican Grovemment for
official documents requisite for claimants*
proofs. At date of the report, in only two
cases out of eleven had the requisition been
complied with. Many of the claims depended
for a legal statement on judicial and other
Mexican documents. These documents Mex-

» Life of Henry Clay, vol. ii., p. 235.

2 "The King of Prussia is the Umpire and is repre-
sented by his minister here." — N ties' Register ^ 1840,
p. 274.

Claims and Correspondence 177

ico, in the convention for arbitration, Article
IV, had promised to furnish on requisition.
Requisition was made in due form, but the
American Commissioners, William L. Marcy
and H. W. Breckenridge, report April 23,
1842:

First — Mexico has wholly omitted to send even
a moiety of the documents . . . and no reasons
are given to the board. Second — several of the
documents actually sent are on the face of them
not full records, but refer to other acts which
ought to appear in the same, but do not. Third
— ^there are discrepancies between documents
thus transmitted from Mexico to the board
and others equally authenticated which, with-
out explanation, mutually destroy each other's
credit.

The character of the claims against Mexico
may be gathered in part from the list pre-
sented in the final award, and in other part,
perhaps, by diligent research among the
papers filed by claimants, which, however,
even with the awards for check, would be
biased statements. Many of the claims
were for the seizure of American vessels;
others for murder, robbery, imprisonment,
spoliation of American citizens by Mexican I
officials. Some of these claims had been '

178 The Mexican War

adjudicated and had remained for a long
time impaid. The claim fotmded on the
seizure of the American vessel the Cossack,
and cargo, rested on a judgment of the
Supreme Court of Justice in Mexico.

William Hallett and Zalmon Hull had
been taken from the house of the American
consul at Matamoras and held imder arrest
as spies. 1 In the sack of Zacatecas the
property and lives of peaceful American
merchants had been taken. 2

A trading and exploring expedition from
Austin, Texas, to Santa F6, armed, but in-
sufficiently, against the Indians, who nearly
destroyed them, attempted to take refuge
in Santa F6; but were all held as prisoners
by the Mexican governor, and barbarously
treated. There is no doubt that if the
inhabitants of Santa F6 had shown a coura-
geous disposition to claim Texan citizenship,
this Texan expedition would have assisted
them in throwing off the Mexican control and
asserting the Texan jurisdiction — the town
being within the territory acknowledged as

» Senate Documents, 2d session, 24th Congress, vol.
2., Doc. 160, pp. 134-8.

2 Narrative of the Texan Santa F^ Expedition^ George
Wilkins Kendall, New York, 1844, vol. ii., p. 143-4.

Claims and Correspondence 1 79

Texan by the treaty of Velasco, that is, being
east of the Rio del Norte.

Some of the members of the party claimed
American citizenship, among them George
Wilkins Kendall, who was a traveller, partly
for his health, and who had passports and
letters from Mexican authorities. He wrote
a full account of the expedition and his ex-
periences as a prisoner in a vivid and entirely
convincing style. Among the Mexican of-
fences he noted are these:

Samuel Rowland, a native of New Bedford,
Mass., in a daring attempt to escape and
give important information to Colonel Cook's
party, not yet captured, was wounded, re-
captured, bound, and shot in the back by
orders of Amijo. ^

**Golpin, a merchant and a citizen of the
United States, was too sick and weak to keep
up." (The expedition had not been able
to distinguish whether they were on the
branches of the Red River or the Arkansas;
had completely lost their way, 2 and arrived
in Santa F6 in a condition of suffering and
exhaustion which elsewhere would have

> Narrative of the Texan Santa FS Expedition^ George
Wilkins Kendall, New York, 1844, vol. i. p. 305.
a Ihid,, p. 249.

/

/

i8o The Mexican War

awakened compassion.) Salazar the Mexican
commandant started them at once on foot
for the City of Mexico.^ ** Golpin had made
a bargain with one of the guard to ride his
mule for a short distance, for which he was
to give him his only shirt." While in the
act of taking it off Salazar ordered a soldier
to shoot him. ** The first ball only wounded
the wretched man, but the second killed
him instantly with the shirt still over his
face.'' 2

** Griffith had been wounded by Indians.
When, too weak and lame to travel, he sank
to the groimd, he was told by a soldier to
rise or he would obey the orders of Salazar
to put to death all who could not keep up.
He made one feeble and ineffectual attempt.
The brutal miscreant knocked his brains
out with a musket. His blanket was then
stripped from him as the reward of his
murderer, his ears were cut off, and he was
thrown to the buzzards and wolves."^

While Gates was dying of inflammation
of the lungs, a Mexican twice snapped a gun

» Narrative of the Texan Santa F^ Expedition, vol. i.,
p. 365, and vol. ii., p. 14.
^Ibid., vol. ii., p. 14.
^ Ibid., vol. ii., p. 17.

Claims and Correspondence i8i

in his face, apparently enjoying the torture
he was inflicting. His ears were cut off. ^

Major Bennett, the quartermaster (of the
expedition), **was a native of Massachusetts,
bom and educated among the descendants
of the Puritans; he knew the Bible almost by
heart and was always ready with a passage
from that book with which to illustrate or
point his discourse; he had been a lieutenant
in the United States service at Bridgewater
and Limdy's Lane, and was wounded in
several places at the battle of Victoria in the
Texan service. He had the small-pox in the
prison in the city of Mexico." 2 The prison was
crowded with small-pox patients and lepers.

In citing, not opinions but testimony of an
eye-witness, and an excellent observer and
recorder, it is a relief to interpolate one
of his illustrations of the kindness of many
of the Mexican people to which he gratefully
and amusingly testifies, contrasting them
with the infamous brutality of their rulers.
Mr. Kendall says he was himself ** raised far
enough *down east' to have a natural fond-
ness for codfish and potatoes" and a dish of

» Narrative of the Texan Santa F4 Expedition, vol. ii.,
p. 24.

^Ibid., vol. ii., p. 218.

1 82 The Mexican War

it was sent to him, to his great and almost
pitiful delight, by a talented Mexican lady,
wife of a native of the sea-coast of Massachu-
setts resident in the city of Mexico.^

It did not seem to inmates of Mexican
prisons that the diplomatic service of the
United States was criminally impetuous
about securing proper treatment and speedy
trial for such of them as had claims to the
protection of American citizens.

The Texans jeered at them for the indiffer-
ence of their government; and Kendall says:

The fact is notorious that a fear of losing po-
litical influence has induced those in power [in
the United States] to sacrifice the independence
and jeopard the honor of the country on more
occasions than one.

Full well does the Mexican Government
understand this weak point in our foreign
policy; else we never should hear of our country-
men being arrested, robbed of all their evidence,
denied a hearing, thrust into loathsome pris-
ons among malefactors, compelled to labor in
chains, and all to gratify the caprice or feed the
revenge of some such tyrant as Santa Anna.^

Imprisoned unjustly in one of the vilest

» Narrative of the Texan Santa F^ Expedition, vol. ii.,
p. 246.

2 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 212.

Claims and Correspondence 183

holes in Christendom, surrounded by loathsome
wretches whose very aspect was enough to
drive one to desperation [lepers and small-pox
patients], shut out completely from the world,
taunted almost daily by my Texan comrades
with invidious comparisons between my own
government and that of Great Britain in looking j
after the rights of their subjects. ^ /

Kendall was not kept informed of what was
being attempted, and what probably was
being hindered by factious opposition.

As to Santa F6 prisoners Mr. Webster
warmly interposed, and sent special instruc-
tions to Mr. Ellis. 2

It may seem to be a weak conclusion to
pass from official protests, and the words of
an eye-witness who had in person suffered
from Mexican outrages, to citations of opin-
ion; but it would not be justifiable to omit
the summary of evidences by two men who
had exceptional means of information and
were generally careful or even reticent in
their manner of speech.

** The claims against Mexico," in Tyler's

» Narrative of the Texan Santa F^ Expedition, vol. ii.,
p. 266.

^Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 257.

1 84 The Mexican War

opinion, ** had their origin in the most abom-
inable spoliations on the property of our
citizens." ^

General Cadmus M. Wilcox believed that
** The ill feeling caused by the wanton attacks
on the rights, persons, and property of
American citizens for over forty years must
have culminated in war, even had the Texan
question not been agitated." ^

> Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 283.

2 The History of the Mexican War, Cadmus M. Wilcox,
Washington, 1892, p. 2.

CHAPTER XI

CORRESPONDENCE

THE character of the claims against Mex-
ico was not such as to render agree-
able any interchange of commimications in
regard to them; and the motives which have
already been considered tended to any-
thing but facilitating diplomatic interchanges.
Diplomacy has its troubles.

On the one side was a nation accused of
piracy, larceny, and murder; on the other a
government accused of breach of neutrality
and land-grabbing intentions — Si formidable
party in the latter leading in the vehemence
of the accusation. Mexican diplomatists en-
dowed with brains enough to be intrusted
with the care of Mexican relations with the
United States must have been aware that
the conditions in Texas were not creditable
to Mexico either in the failure of Mexican
administration before the Texan war, in

i8S

1 86 The Mexican War

the manner in which that war had been
conducted, in the immediate repudiation of
the treaty of Velasco, or in the ridiculously-
futile attempts of Mexico to make any one
believe, since the battle of San Jacinto, that
there was still a war. For there was imtil
the annexation of Texas a terrible war on
paper waged between those eloquent bellig-
erents Santa Anna and Sam Houston; the
former threatening to ** drive the Texans
across the Sabine," ^ and the latter to ** plant
the lone star flag on the isthmus of Darien."
But other than brave words there was noth-
ing doing. There was nothing like it tmtil
professional pugilists contested the cham-
pionship belt in the newspapers.

A few raids of Indians and Mexicans into
Texas at San Antonio, Goliad, and Salado
Creek had been promptly repulsed, and one
or two Texan attacks on Mexican posts to
the south of the Rio Grande had met defeat.
At Salado some Texan prisoners were taken,
and while being marched to the dungeons of
the City of Mexico, made a heroic effort at es-
cape ; but were recaptured, and Santa Anna
ordered them to be shot. On joint protest

» By which, perhaps, he meant the Nueces, which
was early known as the Western Sabine.

Correspondence 187

of the foreign ministers he substituted deci-
mation. The remaining nine tenths were
condemned to servile labor, hitched to wag-
ons, and set to hauling rocks.

Mayne Reid made the sufferings of these
prisoners at Meir and Salado the basis of his
story The Free Lances,

The consciousness that their country was
attracting the unfavorable attention of foreign
powers — to whom Houston's ministers were
making constant protest against the guerilla
and pirate methods of harassing, rather than
attacking, Texas — must have had a disquiet-
ing effect on the nerves of Mexican diplomats.
The consciousness that its language was de-
served would not have made fhore palatable
the dispatch, for instance, of Daniel Webster
dated January 31, 1843 •

Mr. Webster instructed the American Minister
at Mexico to remonstrate in strong but kind
and friendly language against the marauding
mode of warfare carried on against Texas, in
open violation of the rules recognized by all
Christian and civilized States in modem times;
and further stated that tinless Mexico in a
short time made peace with Texas, or showed
a disposition and an ability to prosecute
the war with a respectable force, the United

1 88 The Mexican War

States had it in contemplation to remonstrate
in a still more forcible manner. ^

It will require a diligent search to find
anything in the correspondence any agent
of the United States ever addressed to the
Mexican authorities which would cut deeper
than these words of a most distinguished
statesman and Secretary of State. The most
bitter significance in the dignified protest is
that it was fully deserved; for in her in-
fatuation Mexico was constantly adding to
her old list of offences new affronts to civil-
ized humanity.

Among the early barbarities recounted by
Yoakum, as short-sighted as brutal, was the
affair at Agua Dolce; an affair the effect
of which on diplomacy between the United
States and Mexico cannot fail to be imagined
even if not directly traced. There had been
a sharp little battle ; the regular programme
followed, the slaughter of all the wounded
and prisoners that had fallen into the
hands of the Mexicans. Dr. Grant alone was
made an exception. He was detained as
a captive by General Urrea (the butcher

1 Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 260.

Senate Documents, 1843-4, Doc. 341, p. 69.

Correspondence 189

of Goliad) that the Mexicans might have the
benefit of his services in attending their nu-
merous woimded; for which he was prom-
ised a passport. After he had done all that
could be done for their wounded comrades, he
was tied to a wild horse, told ** This is your
passport," and torn to pieces.^ Urrea was
not present at the actual murder of Dr.
Grant; but it incapacitated him, perhaps,
even more for a witness, or a man of honor,
that he screened his guilty subordinate from
investigation by a false official report of the
brutal murder of a prisoner who was under
his own special protection, and to whom
he was under the most delicate debt.

That this particular case had been brought
to the attention of the Department of State
is only a probability or a conjecture. That
it had not been bought to the notice of Mr.
Powhatan Ellis is next to impossible. That
it did not put his temper, even as a diploma-
tist, to the severest strain is to believe him
to have been something more than human
and less than humane.

If his conduct of negotiations was ever dis-
courteous, much ought surely to be pardoned

* History of Texas ^ H. Yoakum, New York, 1886, vol.
ii., p. 84.

I go The Mexican War

to a man put in his position. When he
started an inquiry of the Mexican author-
ities as to the ground for detention of William
Hallett and Zalmon Hull, taken, under the
charge of being spies, from the house of the
United States Consul at Matamoras — a,
breach, of course, in itself of United States
sovereignty — Monasterio, the acting Mexican
Minister of Foreign Affairs, enclosed to Mr.
Ellis a letter of instruction to himself from
Tomel, Secretary of War, quoting the state-
ment of General Urrea, the hero of Goliad
(La Bahia) and Agua Dolce. There does
not seem to be any just ground of suspicion
that Mr. Ellis expressed disgust or incredulity
in any undiplomatic form. He ought to
have kept a diary, like John Quincy Adams.
Perhaps he did.

It is true that Mr. Ellis demanded his
passports before negotiations had made
much progress, and somewhat suddenly.
December 9, 1836, the Mexican Minister,
between whom and the United States For-
eign office had been the more important
correspondence, withdrew from Washington.
Mr. Forsyth, of course, immediately notified
Mr. Ellis, who received the information, with
a well-considered expression of Secretary

Correspondence 191

Forsyth's regret, December 13th. After the
Mexican refusal to communicate with his
chief, Mr. Ellis could not courteously re-
main long in Mexico.

The correspondence of Mr. Ellis was not
of grave importance, relatively. The sus-
picion of Professor Sumner that he ** acted
by orders " is certainly a reasonable inference.
A diplomatic agent is very apt to conform
to his instructions from the Secretary of
State, especially if the Secretary is himself
personally conducting the principal negotia-
tions.

There does not seem to be any proof offered,
however, for the intimation that under the
circumstances he ** performed his duties
in a rude or peremptory manner"^; and, so

* Since this chapter was written Professor Garrison
refers in WestTvard Extension, New York, 1907, p. 190,
to House Executive Documents, 24th Congress, 2d
session, No. 139, pp. 60-67, ^s indicating that Ellis'
letters were **more forcible than diplomatic." Pos-
sibly the following extracts may seem more strenuous
than the letter quoted from on p. 171 (note) supra.
No others seem more peremptory than Ellis to Mon-
asterio, December 7, 1836:

Speaks of charges made by each side against the
other, and continues: "Your excellency requests that
a full statement of all claims on the part of citizens
of the United States may be presented for consideration;

192 The Mexican War

far from his being under instructions to that
effect, Mr. Forsyth's written despatches
were well-tempered and conciliatory.

From May 14, 1836, the more important di-
plomatic correspondence between the United
States and Mexico, of which Mr. Ellis' com-
munications were a supplement, was taking
place in Washington between Senor Don
Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza, Envoy Extra-
ordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the
Mexican republic, and John Forsyth, Secre-
tary of State, until September 28th, when Mr.
Forsyth retired from personal conduct of the
correspondence, and substituted for himself

but, from the manner in which those already in the
possession of this government have been disposed of,
the undersigned can see no good likely to result from
such a course. If those that might be presented
should be all acknowledged as just, yet so long as the
several unprovoked and inexcusable outrages inflicted
on the officers and flag of this country which have been
heretofore submitted to the Mexican Executive re-
mained unsatisfactorily answered, I would have but
one course to pursue." . . . Requests his passports.

December 27th, he writes to Secretary Fors)rth, for-
warding copies of two notes of Mr. Monasterio, one of
which contained a request to be informed of the causes
of his proposed departure from the Mexican republic.
He adds: ** I can view such an inquiry in no other light
than as an uncourteous refusal of my passports, and
therefore I deem an answer to it unnecessary."

Correspondence 1 93

the Hon. Asbury Dickins. The only excep-
tion taken to the form of the United States'
papers in this correspondence was the use
of the phrase ''contested territory" instead
of ** Mexican territory" as applied to Texas.
As the battle of San Jacinto had been fought,
and the treaty of Velasco signed, prior to the
opening of the correspondence, which related
chiefly to neutral obligations, it would seem
to be as far as diplomatic courtesy could go,
to admit that the territory was contested
at all at that date. It certainly was all that
could be conceded and maintain an accept-
able attitude, as a neutral, to Texas. Don
Gorostiza demanded that a Texan vessel
which was said to be armed, and to have
helped blockade a Mexican port, be seized
and its crew treated as pirates, which surely
would not have been consistent with neutral-
ity in the war which Mexico asserted was in
progress. His chief insistence was that
General Gaines should not be permitted to
cross the Sabine, that any suppression of
Indian raids must be left to Mexico an3rwhere
west of the Sabine, and that President Jack-
son should promise in no event to send
troops to the west of that river. Not securing
compliance with these demands, Don Goros-

13

194 The Mexican War

tiza demanded his passports. Diplomacy
failed to reconcile wholly discrepant views of
the obligations of the two countries. It was
this vital discrepancy which terminated the
negotiations. It was not due to discourtesy
of American diplomats. In his letter request-
ing his passports, Don Gorostiza added to the
usual and formal compliments and assurances
of distinguished consideration, the promise
to **ever bear in mind the frank and noble
manner in which Mr. Dickins has acted
toward the undersigned on occasions which
were in truth by no means agreeable and in
affairs which, from their nature, were much
less so."^ Jackson's message informing
Congress — December 5, 1836 — of the close of
diplomatic relations with Mexico was admir-
ably conciliatory in tone.

The gist of disagreement was the sending
Gaines across the Sabine, into territory
which, as Texas had not yet been formally
recognized, was technically Mexico's.

Forsyth's letter to Ellis, December 9th,
was a well-tempered, able exposition of why
it seemed necessary to make such defence

> Correspondence between Mexico and the United
States from May 14 to October 20, 1836, etc., Senate
Documents, 2d Session, 24th Congress, p. 105.

Correspondence 195

against the Indians about Nacogdcx^hes,
and hoped *'the Mexican government would
not construe the justifiable precaution for
frontier defence made necessary by its [the
Mexican government's] known inability in
execution of the stipulations of our treaty
into an encroachment upon its honor/'

The advance of Gaines was the onus of
Mexican complaint. It should be noted in
passing that an administration really desirous
of bringing on a war had several favorable
opportunities offered in the withdrawal
of ministers and insults to the flag.

The writers of histories have not failed
to charge the pro-slavery administrations
with sufficient blame for the Gaines invasion.
Brady classes it with other (unspecified)
** breaches of international comity and fla-
grant violations of international law which
had aggrieved Mexico almost to the breaking
point."!

Elson charges it upon Jackson that he
**sent an army under Gaines 'to keep Texan
Indians off our soil,' but in fact" (a fact
assumed by the historian) '*to connive with
Houston. Gaines' troops deserted freely

» Conquest of the Southwest^ Cynis Townsend Brady,
New York, 1905, p. 156.

196 The Mexican War

and joined Houston,*** a not improbable
circumstance; soldiers condemned to inac-
tivity often desert to a more active service
which has their sympathies.

Schouler calls the Gaines ** invasion"
**the Florida trick over again, conceived
by the same brain." 2

Gaines' command was used as an army of
observation. Sumner states the facts fairly.^
'* Jackson had ordered that General Gaines"
(who was posted near the Sabine) ** should
enter the territory of Texas and march to
Nacogdoches" (not ** seize it," as Brady
alleges) *'if he thought there was any danger
of hostilities on the part of the Indians
and if there was suspicion that the Mexican
general was stirring up the Indians to war
on the United States." It is to be supposed
that reasonable suspicion and anticipation
of danger is intended. Professor Sumner
adds his own suspicions, and by way of
innuendo: *'Here we have another remin-

» History of the United States, Henry William Elson,
New York, 1904, pp. 496 and 497.

2 History of the United States, James Schouler, Boston,
1889, vol. iv., p. 253.

3 Andrew Jackson, William Graham Sumner, Boston,
1882, p. 356.

Correspondence 197

iscence of Florida revived; Gaines under-
stood his orders, and entered the Mexican
territory." ^

Without at this point entering into the
question of boundaries on the sources of the
rivers of the Gulf and of the Mississippi
watershed, it is enough for the present
purpose to remember that the boundaries
between the United States and Mexico or
Texas in the Red River region were uncer-
i;ain. When there was an Indian uprising it
would be uncertain on whose territory a
defending or avenging column was advanc-
ing. We have considered in a former chapter
the especially dangerous numbers and hos-
tility of the Indian tribes which had formerly
driven back Mexican frontiers to Chihuahua
and Tamaulipas. A provision had been
inserted in the treaty of 1831 agreeing that
troops of either nation would suppress
Indian uprisings which threatened the inhab-
itants of the other. Generals Santa Anna,
Cos, Filisola, and Sesma had been pursuing
Houston through Texas, and following close
on the trails of old men, women, and children
flying to Nacogdoches, when Jackson took
the first measures looking toward policing

1 Andrew Jackson, p. 356.

198 The Mexican War

the Indians over the Sabine. The Cam-
peachy Indians had been the Mexican allies,
and perhaps turned the tide of battle at
Goliad and its accursed butcheiy. Driven
out of Texas by the battle of San Jacinto,
Mexico was keeping up a war of words and
guerilla raids aided by Indian uprisings.
There was especial danger at Nacogdoches.
** There was an actual outbreak in which the
Caddoes from east of the Sabine were credibly
reported to have taken part." ^ The immedi-
ate peril was averted or postponed by Gaines'
crossing the Sabine; or the plans of Texas'
and America's enemies developed with
less rapidity than had been feared. That
there was danger of greater outbreak than
that of the Caddoes is apparent from develop-
ments a little later. 2 *'In 1838 about 300
Mexican settlers near Nacogdoches were
joined by as many Indians in a rising which
looked very dangerous for a time. Their

» Westward Extension, George Pierce Garrison, New
York, 1906, p. 89.

2 "May 19, 1836, several hundred Indians attacked
Fort Parker and slaughtered the garrisons on the
head-waters of the Navallo about sixty miles from
the settlements. The defeat of the Mexicans prevented
a general attack on the frontier.** — History of Texas,
H. Yoakum, New York, 1856, vol. ii., p. 179.

Correspondence 199

leader, Vicente Cordova, was said to be
acting under a commission from the Mexican
General Filisola." ^

It is no wonder that some Yankee soldiers
in camp of observation, on either side of the
Sabine, took absence without leave, to have
a hand in suppressing a war party which
might supply itself with scalps from the
dwellings of Nacogdoches in Texas or Natchi-
toches in Louisiana. The soldier cared
nothing on which side of a little river he
effected such result. Neither did Jackson,
probably, care overmuch, nor Gaines. And
it was in view of this that Forsyth, through
Powhatan Ellis — ^who had nothing savage
about him save the name of a distant and
royal relative, — ^was urging, somewhat stren-
uously for Hidalgo notions of diplomatic
dilatoriness, the ridiculous Mexican travesty
of a government, and farcical belligerent, to
remember that the Texan army stood be-
tween Nacogdoches and the Mexican forces;
and that it should not be considered
meantime an encroachment on the honor
of Mexico to protect from destruction by

* Westward Extension, George Pierce Garrison, New
York, 1906, p. 233, citing '* letters on file in the diplo-
matic correspondence of the Republic of Texas."

200 The Mexican War

Indians the women and children over whom
Mexico still claimed jurisdiction. But the
supercilious Hidalgo, with his stage-strut,
preferred to permit, or incite, the ruin of his
dependent subjects, rather than let his honor
be infringed by the tread of a neighbor's sol-
diers on the sacred soil from which he was him-
self by this time a fugitive pursued by Texan
rifles. And if the storm of the gathering
fiends should first break on the heads of the
people of Louisiana, the citizens of our own
republic? (For where there was most booty
the storm clouds would be apt to drift.) The
United States must endure the peril, submit
to savage loot if it evaded her sentinel lines,
and look to Mexico for damages.* That
was the position taken by Don Gorostiza
by the instructions of Santa Anna. No
wonder he found the ** occasions not
agreeable."

For such sort of mortal disease as Red
River Indian raids, Jackson held to the
old-fashioned doctrine that an ounce of

» There is an interesting degree of parallelism in the
Cananea affair in 1906, in which the interference of
American troops to prevent riot, until Mexican troops
could arrive, was not resented by the Mexican govern-
ment.

Correspondence 20 1

^ prevention is worth a pound of cure, and let
Gaines administer it — as results proved
without bloodshed.

International law is not such an exalted
institution that it has yet risen above the
precedents of the common law which governs
the everyday life of the citizen. Indeed, in
many matters it is far behind the practice of
our courts of jurisdiction over individuals.

If A's bam is afire, and adjoins your house,
and endangers it; and you climb over A's
fence without his invitation or permission,
and extinguish the fire, you commit a techni-
cal trespass; but any sane judge or jury
will refuse A any other than nominal dam-
ages, and will possibly find implied permission,
even if A protests and resists — in which case
you knock A down and put out his fire
all the same. And you would not be made
to suffer unendurably for that either. There
is legal technicality, and there is common-
sense in international law — and in the
police courts. And, practically, common-
sense is good law; technically good enough
in most cases for really able lawyers and
sotmd judges.

Jackson put out his neighbor's fire, and
saved his neighbor's tenants and his own;

202 The Mexican War

and can stand, or his memory can, the
criticism of whoever is appalled, and wounded
in his sense of etiquette, that Jackson should
have been capable of common-sense on a
national scale. Garrison, who, as a Texan,
has grown up into a fuller sympathy with
the events on Texan borders and a broader
view of Mexican affairs than others possess,
well says:

What the criticism would have been if the
instructions to Gaines had been such as to
prevent him from advancing to protect the mass
of women and children who fled before the
Mexican invasion in March and April, 1836,
from the Indian attack that was then feared,
can hardly be imagined; and the government
[of Jackson's administration] may well have been
pleased to incur what it did rather than this. *

There are no considerable complaints
as to the conduct of other diplomatic agents
of the United States, until Mr. John Slidell
of Louisiana was sent to Mexico on a delicate
mission in 1845 — ^which is to be considered
later. But there were dissensions in the
diplomatic correspondence worth mention
partly because of the shape in which they

^Texas, a Contest of Civilizations, George Pierce
Garrison, Boston, 1903, p. 254.

Correspondence 203

are made to appear in some of Daniel
Webster's letters. Mexico querulously in-
sisted on the United States observing neutral
obligations in accordance with Mexican in-
terpretations throughout the long periods
of Texan settlement and war for independ-
ence, and during the alleged war for resub-
jugation of Texas, until annexation. The
impossibility of Mexican demands was not
ended with the answer made by Jackson, nor
for years after; and became, with the Oregon
question, a burden to Tyler's administration.
Bocanegra was Mexican Minister to the
United States; his complaints were in the
most offensive manner, inviting the reply
which Mr. Webster made, that

the President considered the language and
tone of Mr. Bocanegra's letter derogatory to the
character of the United States and highly
offensive, and directed that no other answer
be given to it than the declaration that the
conduct of the United States in regard to the
war between Mexico and Texas, having been
always hitherto governed by a strict and im-
partial regard to its neutral obligations, will not
be changed or altered in any respect or degree.^

1 Letters and Times of the Tylers^ Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 259.

204 The Mexican War

Mr. Webster had urged that ** Mexico had
been even more diligent than Texas in clan-
destinely obtaining contraband of war from
the United States and other nations," in-
cluding two armed vessels. He compared
Mexico with herself; exhibiting how ridicu-
lous was her war against Texas,

unsupported by anjrthing but proclamations for
six years, aptly illustrated by the stubbornness
of Spain in sulkily declining to acknowledge
the independence of Mexico herself until after
twenty years, during all of which time Mexico
had opened her arms wide to multitudes from the
United States, England, Ireland, France, and
Italy who flocked to fight her battles. ^

Daniel Webster has been enough admired
for his command of language to warrant
the expectation that he would surpass Mr.
Powhatan Ellis in formality of diction; but
he is certainly as severe.

In August, 1843, the Mexican Government
virtually put on file a provisional declaration
of war, an ultimatum couched in such
terms that the passage of the resolution of
annexation by the United States Congress,
signed by the President March i, 1845, com-
pleted the status which constituted a condi-

» Letters and Times of the Tylers ^ vol. ii., p. 258.

Correspondence 205

tion of war between the two countries; and,
from any point of view which regards ques-
tions of infringement of rights **so far as
Mexico is concerned " (to borrow again the
language of Judge Niles), any advance of
troops, seizure of vessels or ports, any act
of war on the part of either nation, would
have been justified as within the rules of
conduct of civilized war.* The Mexican
Government declared in August, 1843, that
the passage of an act by the Congress of the
United States at Washington to incorporate
Texas with the territory of the United States
would be considered equivalent to a declara- V-
tion of war. 2

When therefore the annexation resolution
was passed by Congress, war existed by
sufficiently formal declarations so far as
concerned the rights of nations; and no act
of war or advance into territory of the enemy
can be condemned for breach of international
law. Constitutional, humane, or political |
objections are another thing.

1 Until the resolution of the Hague Conference,
July 16, 1907.

a Bocanegra to Waddy Thompson. House, Executive
Documents, 28th Congress, ist Session, No. 2, pp.
26-7 and 41-8.

\

2o6 The Mexican War

The Slidell incident was therefore, so far
as any question of international right between
the United States and Mexico is concerned,
a mere matter of supererogation; and de-
serves little notice save that it has been
made a text for a number of slurs on the
diplomacy of the United States.

Schouler, * Schurz,^ Brady, ^ Elson* find
in it additional grievance to Mexico, and
proof that a political cabal was forcing war
on Mexico for the purpose of robbing her
of California; although there was pretext
for seizing California ports quite sufficient
in the conditions of tyranny and abuse on
that coast without relying on any Texan
troubles, or diplomatic provocations.

As early as December 4, 1841, Upshur's
report as Secretary of the Navy exhibited
'*the necessity of naval protection to United
States settlers in California''; and the neces-
sity was obvious at the time of Fremont's

» History of the United States, James Schouler, Boston,
1889, vol. iv., p. 524, note.

2 Life of Henry Clay, Carl Schurz, Boston, 1887, vol.
ii., p. 277.

3 The Conquest of the Southwest, Cyrus Townsend
Brady, New York, 1905, pp. 172 and 173.

* History of the United States, Henry William Elson,
New York, 1904, p. 526.

Correspondence 207

expedition, which must be noticed later with
questions of boundary and surveys.

The passage of the annexation resolution,
March i, 1845, was immediately followed
by the departure of the Mexican minister,
March 6th, and on March 28, 1845, ^U diplo-
matic relations between the two countries
had come to an end.

But up to October 13th, no blood had been
actually shed — not officially — and, though
manifestoes and proclamations went to show
that Mexico was acting in accordance with
her threats, and regarded the annexation a
declaration of war, there was a slight hope
in some pious minds that war might yet be
averted. A request therefore was made to
the Mexican Government to receive a special
envoy with. power to adjust all questions in
dispute. The request was granted by the
liberal Herrera administration ; but a United
States naval squadron was near Vera Cruz for
the protection of neutral shipping, and this
was looked upon as a menace. The squadron
was therefore withdrawn, and, November loth,
John Slidell of Louisiana (whose diplomatic
qualities were such as to make him, in 1862,
the first choice of the Confederacy to repre-
sent it in Europe) was accredited to Herrera,

2o8 The Mexican War

as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Pleni-
potentiary. It was objected that President
Polk transcended his permission in sending
a fiinctionary so entitled.^ But a minister
was at that date the highest diplomatic
officer known to the United States service ^ ;
and there was no appropriation apparently
for payment of an official of like rank by
any other name. On the recognition of
Texas it was necessary to pass a special
act to pay a diplomatic agent. ^

The government of Herrera, comparatively
liberal and inclined to peace with the United
States, was too weak to dare oppose Mexican
public sentiment, and, December 21st, de-
clined to receive Mr. Slidell. Brady says he
**left the country in high dudgeon."* In
fact he only retired to Vera Cruz and awaited
orders. Without imputing lack of personal
courage to Mr. Slidell — or Mr. Powhatan Ellis,

» Conquest of the Southwest^ Cyrus Townsend Brady,
New York, 1905, p. 172; Life of Henry Clay, Carl
Schurz, Boston, 1887, p. 277.

2 Century Dictionary and American Diplomacy ,
Eugene Schuyler, pp. 108 and 119.

3 Supra t p. 137; and resolution of recognition, March,

1,1837-

* Conquest of the Southwest, Cyrus Townsend Brady,
New York, 1905, p. 173.

Correspondence 209

or any other American official who may have
been charged with haste in retiring from
Mexico when excused from duty — it should
be understood that when there was an excite-
ment in Mexico — and that was almost
constantly — it was a very unsafe place of
residence for anybody, especially for an
American whose official character was unrec-
ognized or had terminated, and who was
likely to be regarded as a spy; and without
reckoning on the value of his own skin, a
diplomat would be forgetful of his official
obligations who did not bear in mind that so
much as an indignity to a national repre-
sentative is, of itself, enough to embroil
nations.

General Paredes succeeded to the Dictator-
ship of Mexico, March i, 1846; Slidell
again presented his credentials and was
again repulsed.

When the rejection of a United States
minister was reported as * * another grievance, "
Brady assumes the judicial robe and pro-
nounces it **of course untrue." ^

In treating the Slidell mission as a part of
the alleged conspiracy of which Polk was
now the exponent, to force a war and capture

> Conquest of the Southwest, p. 173.

14

2IO The Mexican War

California, the consensus of historians is
based on their interpretation of a single
slender bit of information. The charge
that a President of the United States used
his office with the deliberate purpose of
forcing his country into what is assumed
to have been a dishonorable position, and a
bloody war, ^ is asserted, not on the testimony
of some telepathic expert, but on the report
of a witness that Polk once said: ** There
are four great measures which are to be the
measures of my administration, — a, reduction
of the tariff; the re-establishment of the
independent treasury; the settlement of the
Oregon boundary; and the acquisition of
California/*

Brady traces this important discovery to
Elson, Elson to Schouler, and Schouler says
he had a letter in February, 1887, from
George Bancroft, Secretary of the Navy in
1845, which said that President Polk made
the statement to him in private conversation.
Not a syllable is found to intimate that there
was to be any effort to obtain a port which
Webster had said was worth so many times
more than all Texas, by any other means

» The Foundations of American Foreign Policy,
Albert Bushnell Hart, New York, 190 1, p. 71.

Correspondence 211

than ptirchase or negotiation, nothing to
show that the war, if war was wanted, could
not have been brought on just as rapidly
without a peace mission.

On the contrary, Slidell's instructions
were

to offer Mexico that the United States would
assume the payment of all just claims (of her
own citi25ens) against Mexico to date (including /
instalment due on adjusted claims since April '
and September, 1844) and adjust the western/
boundary of Texas, and pay an amount to b^
negotiated.

1 I

Mexico was too poor to pay the judgments
against her; too proud to say so; and it was
regarded as a graceful inducement to peace-
ful negotiations to become her banker.

But the opportunity is seized for criticism
of Slidell and a blow over his shoulder at
the whole body of United States diplomats
concerned for six administrations with Mexi-
can affairs, by describing him **as tactful
as other ministers sent to Mexico." As he
was not even received by the Mexican
Cjovemment, it is difficult to see how he had

» Life of Buchanan, George Ticknor Curtis, New
York, 1883, vol, i., p. 593.

212 The Mexican War

occasion for showing himself to be tactful
or otherwise.

When so much is made of so little by such
distinguished writers, it is a natural infer-
ence that there is not much to support an
untenable theory.

Slidell was authorized to offer $5,000,000
for Texas and $25,000,000 for California.
But the sale of either of them was not to
be made a condition of peace negotiations.
The amounts offered were to be

besides assuming the claims of United States
citizens against Mexico. . . . He was warned that
conciliation of the Mexicans was indispensable
to his success . . . [and] was to bear and for-
bear much in order to accomplish his mission.
Later Slidell was informed that, if he discovered
that the attempt to settle the boundary question
in the manner indicated by his instructions
would endanger the two prime objects of his
mission — ^to counteract foreign influence adverse
to the interests of the United States, and to
restore the old peaceful relations with Mexico —
he was not to sacrifice these objects in pursuit
of the unattainable.^

Other causes than the unfitness of John

» Westward Extension, George Pierce Garrison, New
York, 1906, pp. 2 1 5-2 16-2 1 7, citing Buchanan to

Correspondence 213

Forsyth, Daniel Webster, and James Bu-
chanan for maintaining the national dignity
and courtesy in diplomatic formalities were
the causes of the war.

It was the constantly increasing number
and the character of the claims against
Mexico, and the recurring offences on which
they were based, and not the manner of
their presentation, which, General Wilcox
saw, must have eventuated in war.

And neither the claims nor the corre-
spondence nor the desire for slavery exten-
ision had served to bring on armed conflict
I until other causes had supervened.

The wolf continued to be harmless.

Slidell, Nov. 19, 1845, and Dec. 17, 1845, U.S. MSS.
Archives, State Dept.: also for complete exposition
of the peaceful nature of Slidell's instructions and
execution of them, so far as he was permitted by the
Mexican authorities, see ibid.^ pp. 214-225.

CHAPTER XII

BOUNDARIES

IT would have been with extreme difficulty,
and by exercising more than ordinarily
patient regard for each other's convictions,
that any two, most civilized, of the nations
could, for a long period of years, have
avoided quarrelsome contention over bound-
ary lines so undetermined as were those
between the United States and Mexico.

With so ill controlled a disposition to
reckon with as that of Mexico has been
shown to have been, it is next to impossible
that the boundary question alone would not
have brought the borderers of the two
adjacent nations to blows.

The Texas treaty in 1844 did not expressly

define the boundaries of Texas; and President

Tyler said in his message of June 10, 1844, that

**the question was purposely left open for

214

Boundaries 215

negotiation with Mexico, as aCEording the best
opportunity for the most friendly and pacific
arrangements." ^

Tyler did hope, and expect, to obtain Texas
without war; as is made clear by his son's
able history; but he blamed Polk unjustly
for precipitating hostilities. For, as events
proved, it was useless to have left open in
1844 the questions of Texan boundaries.

The treaty of Velasco, the armed interpre-
tation and enforcement of it for nine years,
the vote of the Tex^ Congress insisting on
the boimdary of the Rio Grande, Jackson's
message announcing that insistence, and the
recognition of Texas with notice of the
boundary had made the boimdary between
Texas and Mexico — on the Rio Grande
and the Del Norte, from Point Isabel to
Santa F6 — probably the most clearly de-
fined boundary Mexico had, excepting sea-
coasts only. Three centuries of Spanish
possession had not served to define the
limits of her provinces. 2

» Letters and Times of the Tylers^ Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 435.

2 **I have found nothing to show how far, in Spanish
and American opinion, New Mexico was regarded as
extending west or Sonora south.**

"The name Moqui province was sometimes rather

2i6 The Mexican War

There were two irreconcilable doctrines
as to boiindary or national possession; and
— unless the treaty rights of the United
States and Great Britain, by which the navi-
gation of the St. Lawrence River and the Great
Lakes is shared, and the treaties by which
the navigation of European rivers is mutually
free to the riparian nations, have crystallized
the treaty obligations and practices of
civilized nations into conformity with the
American and Russian doctrine, and marked
an advance in the slow science of international
law — there still are two doctrines, diametri-
cally opposed, by which boundaries may
be originally acquired.

The old doctrine — that under which North
America had been partitioned among the
European powers — ^was as follows:

When any European nation takes possession
of any extent of seacoast [as of New Orleans,
Corpus Christi, Brazos Santiago], that possession
is understood as extending to the interior
country to the sources of the rivers emptying
within that coast, to all their branches and the

vaguely applied to the whole region north of the Gila
Valley." — History of the Pacific States of North America^
Hubert Howe Bancroft, San Francisco, 1 882-1 890, vol.
xvii., pp. 344-5.

Boundaries 217

cotintry they cover [or drain], and to give it a
right to the exclusion of all other nations to the
same. When the boundary between is not
determined by this means, ** the middle distance
becomes such, of course."^

This was convenient Viking law, and has
been so pertinaciously held to by the owners
of war-ships as to be appealed to, for at
least a rule for distribution of spheres of
influence, to the present. If a pirate or
war-ship or, indeed, a merchantman could
nm its prow into a river-mouth, or effect
a landing near it, the sovereign whose flag
the vessel carried took sovereignty over the
whole watershed drained by the river. So
that a garrison in New Orleans maintained
ownership over the Mississippi Valley from
the Alleghenies to the Rockies, and another
at Louisburg commanded the Great Lakes
and the Northwest. The doctrine of actual
occupancy had begim to modify the old
doctrine, but had not eflEectively supplanted
it.

When Kentucky and Tennessee found

> Secretary of State to Don Luis de Onis, March 12,
z8i8; Pinckney and Monroe to Spanish Minister of
Foreign Affairs, April 20, 1805; American State
Papers, vol. xii., pp. 76, 311, 312.

21 8 The Mexican War

themselves inconvenienced by denial of
rights of reshipment of freights at the mouth
of the Mississippi, George Washington and
his Secretary of State, John Adams, pro-
noimced a new doctrine, and set the stakes
for civilized claims.

The new doctrine promulgated by Wash-
ington and Adams in the interest of the new
e F \i republic was : great producing tracts have

A0t«« a natural right of communication, and
c M 1 1 tk# p assage fo r their products to the sea ; and the
Eie wate^ is, of natural right, the free
highway of all nations.

This new doctrine has been the central
and dominating incentive of American foreign
policy; and it has been the ground for the
necessary co-operation of Russia ; not neces-
sary by reason of Romanoff friendship, but
because of Russian needs being identical with
American. The eventual force behind such
necessity is like the outward thrust of gla-
ciers, irresistible, dangerous until it melts
into the sea. The contention of the two
doctrines as to the St. Lawrence ceased
with the sharing of its commerce and that
of the Great Lakes between two kindred
peoples. The Louisiana Purchase avoided
the contention as to the Mississippi region.

Boundaries 2ig

The American doctrine had not been
acknowledged at the date of the Mexican
War, if it ever has been formally acknow-
ledged; and questions of boundary with
Spain or Mexico depended on knowing the
watershed, at least for understanding and
meeting the contentions of Mexican and
American settlers, or knowing for what it was
the interest of either nation to contend.

How little was known of the boundaries
has already appeared in part from the Texas
Santa F6 expedition having lost its way and,
as related by Kendall, having been unable
to know whether it was on the upper forks
of the Red River, or the Colorado of Texas,
or the Canadian branch of the Arkansas.

It is true that by treaty the UnitecJ
States and Mexico had from the first defined
their boundary on paper. The line could be
traced well enough on a map for the most
of its length. The line followed the river
Sabine from the Gulf

to 32° and thence due North to where it strikes
the Rio Roxo of Natchitoches, or Red River;
thence following the course of the Rio Roxo
Westward to 100° west of London, and 23° west
of Washington; thence due North to the
Arkansas river; thence on the South bank

i^2o The Mexican War

of the Arkansas river to its Source in latitude
43^ North and thence on parallel 42^ to the
South Sea, as per Mellish's map of the United
States; but if the source of said river Arkansas
shall be found to fall North or South of 42^*
then the line shall run from said sotirce North
or South as the case may be till it meets 4a^>
and so west on that parallel.

For geographers, except for a jog at 42®,
a practicable line. Nothing easier than to
lay a botmdary line upon a parallel of longi-
tude. But for settlers, htmters, trappers,
who had gone into a wilderness following
the streams whose lower waters were in the
possession of their respective nations, who
was to set the merestones which were to
mark the bounds within which allegiance, obe-
dience, and taxes were due to one sovereign
or the other? And where was the source of
the Arkansas? At what insignificant spring
at the head of some inaccessible runlet was
to be set the comer-stone of division between
two mighty adjacent territories? An addi-
tional article by convention of April 21, 1836,
agreed on a commission to nm the boundary
line and fix landmarks. ^

» Treaties and Conventions between the United States
and other Powers, Washington, 1889, p. 675.

Boundaries 221

Along these enormous stretches of imagin-
ary lines which way was access from the sea-
board, or from settled places, into the
unexplored fertile valleys and forests rich
in furs, perhaps in gold? By what passes
and portages and navigable stretches of
their channels did rivers afford transportation
to centres of commerce present or prospec-
tive; and in the territory of which nation,
subject to what national restriction or con-
cession? An Empire was beckoning and
calling to the engineer and prospector — as
indeed it continues to do to this day.

Out of a vast unmapped region flowed to
the shore lines by not merely divergent,
but by opposite routes and tortuous, dan-
gerous, mountain-guarded channels, many
mighty rivers with countless tributaries.
Eastward poured out from this great and
inexhaustible storehouse of waters the Mis-
souri, the Yellowstone, the Big Horn, the
Nebraska, the Sweetwater, the Arkansas,
Canadian, and Red rivers, finding their
way to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico
through the Louisiana Purchase of the United
States. To the Northwest the Clearwater, the
Salmon River, Salt River, the Henry Fork,
and other tributaries of the Snake or Lewis

222 The Mexican War

branch of the Columbia emptied into the
Pacific at Astoria in the Oregon district
which was being disputed with Great Britain.
These tributaries of the Columbia almost
interlace with the upper sources of the
Humboldt River, which imites with the San
Joaquin and the Sacramento and washes
the bay of San Francisco in what was then
Mexican territory. Another almost unknown
region was the upper watershed of the great
Mexican Colorado, or Green River, and its
branches, the Grand, the San Juan, the
Chiquito, and the Gila, divided by only
narrow ridges from the sources of the Red
and Canadian or Arkansas rivers, the upper
waters of the Rio Grande del Norte and its
chief tributary, the Rio Pecos, which empty
into the Gulf of Mexico near the south-
western end of the Laguna del Madre,
the limit of Texas.

The greater part, almost the whole, of
the vast region where all these rivers and
their branches have their sources was
unmapped and unknown. What priority
of occupation, or descriptions in old deeds
or treaties, were to govern boimdary ques-
tions, even on which principle of the law
of discovery and national pre-emption

Boundaries 223

ancient rights and titles of pioneers were to
be established, was uncertain. Questions as
to the limits of Louisiana went back, as had
questions of partition of the Texan and
Florida seaboard, to the travels of De Soto
and La Salle. The cession from France had
not described the territory conveyed, other
than by the quit-claim description, **the
same tract conveyed to France by Spain."
And that conveyance from France had not
been unconditioned. No metes and bounds
were mentioned. It has been said that when,
after the sale of Louisiana, Talleyrand was
asked what were the boundaries, he replied
that he did not know, and Napoleon added
that, '*if they were not vague it would be
worth while to make them so." And it has
been believed that this disclosed a desire that
there should be left open a subject of conten-
tion between the bordering nations. The
report may be correct; but, if so, fhere was a
duplication of the statements. Channing
thinks that Napoleon, convinced of Talley-
rand's avarice and willingness to convert
to his own use a liberal commission, had not
trusted him with the sale. The Louisiana
Purchase was arranged between Marbois and
Livingston. Talleyrand, after the contract

224 The Mexican War

was completed, was asked about the bound-
aries and answered: **You have made a
grand bargain, make the most of it." When
it was suggested that the boundaries were
indefinite, **Marbois said that 'they were,
and that if the language had not been
indefinite, it would have been well to have
made it so/ "^

A matter of probable contention was not
opened, but was left open, betw^n Spain,
Great Britain, and the United States; and
appears to have been recognized with amused
contentment by the agents of France.

There has seldom existed, therefore, more
urgent reason for surveys of unmapped
wilderness than applied to the vast unknown
tracts claimed by Texas, Great Britain,
the United States, and Mexico with their
unmarked boundaries. The energetic nation
which had despatched the Lewis and Clark
expedition from the Mississippi to the
Pacific, took up the task of such surveys
with commendably undiminished energy,
making surveys and maps in its own evident
interest and in the interest no less evident

^The Jeffersonian System, Edward Channing, New
York, 1906, p 76; Histoire de la Louisiane^ Barbe
Marbois; Paris, 1829, p. 311.

Boundaries 225

of all parties concerned. If delicate diplo-
matic discussions between rival powers were
to ensue, certainly it would be well for the
possibility of anything like permanent adjust-
ment of debated questions, that the parties
to the debate should know what they were
talking about. The history has been written
of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and
there are reports of the other expeditions.
From these, and from any reasonable con-
jectures founded on experiences of discoverers
and surveyors who have penetrated into
savage regions, and encountered the savage
beasts and men that populate them, the
desolation, the distances, the pathless wastes,
the cold or heat, the innumerable privations,
it must be believed that such survey parties
as pushed into the great plains, the Sierras
and Rocky Mountains, and the river gorges,
must of necessity have gone provided with
every equipment for averting anticipated
exhaustion and perils.

But that is not the estimate of some of the
historians.

Dr. Hart, Professor of History at Harvard,

has been among the most eager exponents

of the theory that the Mexican War was

"waged to extend slavery"; so much so

15

226 The Mexican War

that in speaking of it he ignores for the time,
the influences of slaveholding in inducing
the building up of an autocratic class, the
clash in regard to the Missouri Compromise,
the conflicting tariff interests of cotton
planting and manufactures, and declares
that the war **led to sectional rivalries
which speedily brought on the Civil War'*;
a short circle to reason in. Sectional rivalries
brought on the war and the war led to
sectional rivalries and these to more war.
In proof of his theory he asserts another
theory which in its turn needs proof. "When
in 1845 annexation of Texas was accom-
plished, no actual force was employed'* (it
could not be in passing a Congressional
resolution) ** because Mexico made no mil-
itary resistance; but the principle of armed
intervention had been cynically avowed,
and was soon to be put into active service/'^
The avowal, cynical or otherwise, must
have been Mexico's announcement that she
would regard annexation a declaration of war.
Professor Hart reports the results of
unexplained telepathy: *' It was President
Polk's purpose from the beginning of his

1 The Foundations of American Foreign Policy ^
Albert Bushnell Hart, New York, 1901, p. 71.

Boundaries 227

administration to provoke a war with Mex-
ico in order to have a pretext for seizing
California."

We have seen a great deal of ** strong
inference" used in getting evidence for the
fortification of historical theory. In regard
to Polk's action the inference is that it was
designed to bring on war, for California as a
prize, simply because Polk had declared that
he should make it an object to get California;
and that therefore sending a minister with
special peace instructions was for a warlike
purpose.

Buchanan's instructions as Secretary of
State to Slidell had been: ** The President
is sincerely desirous to preserve peace
with Mexico. Both inclination and policy
dictate the course." But the official de-
claration of a very formal chief of the dip-
lomatic service of the United States need
not be regarded as proof of anything as
against a philosophical theory, even although
the desire to have California and the desire
to keep peace with Mexico are made entirely
reconcilable by Professor Hart's own state-
ment when he is arguing the folly of the
war and on very tenable groimd: ** Texas
was already secured and California must

22S The Mexican War

have fallen to the United States without
war." And so it would, perhaps, but for
some external pressure to be considered
in another connection. Polk, Buchanan,
and SlideU are however to be regarded as
having had too little aciunen, and as having
been too ignorant of the diplomatic and
international relations intrusted at that
juncture to themselves only, to have seen
what could only occur to the philosophical
intelligence of a later period and an intelli-
gence not in contact with all the facts in the
case. For it is the gravest diffictalty of
writing history by inference of motives, that
some of the chief facts about which diplo-
matic differences occur are often only known
by the diplomats themselves, and remain
forever unrecorded and unrevealed.

But Professor Hart is equal to all emer-
gencies for proving motive by actions con-
strued by assumed motive: ** Instructions
were issued to nayal oflEicers to be ready to
seize California.'* The instructions might be
more fairly stated to have been to be ready
to anticipate Great Britain if she attempted
to seize any part of the coast ; but, to pass the
California question until the surveying ex-
peditions have been heard from: ** Eight

Boundaries 229

different military expeditions were sent out
into Mexican territory."^ It is impossible
to consider at all such a statement from a
historian, and a teacher of how history
should be written, without vigorous protest
as to its form. It is worse than inference.
It is in the form of an attempt to beget a
reader's inference. It is put in such words
that the facts stated cannot be denied and
disproved; but the words are used in such
connection (in a list of ** aggressive expedi-
tions"), and the facts are stated in support
of such a theory (a theory already stated as
though it were a fact), that a false inference
is suggested. The fact is made a false witness
by an innuendo — ^the very last method of
using language permissible to a historian or
a pupil in history.

What is meant by a ** military expedition " ?
When the ** Putnam Phalanx '* dons the uni-
form of Washington's Continentals of 1780,
arms its rank and file with flintlock mus-
kets, takes rail cars from Hartford, in-
vades Massachusetts, and annihilates the

» Foundations of American Foreign Policy, Albert
Bushnell Hart, New York, 1 901, p. 71. To make out
the number eight, expeditions "during the war" are
included.

230 The Mexican War

commissary stores of the Ancient and Honor-
able Artillery of Boston, that constitutes a
"military expedition" in the expressed opin-
ions of the participants and the vernacular
of the reporter. The only one of the eight
expeditions with which Polk invaded Mexico
which seems to have been worth particu-
larization was Fremont's ** third and most
belligerent." **He had an armed party of
sixty men, and on his arrival in California
was warned off by the Mexican authorities
and betook himself for the time to Oregon." ^
Jn numbers, then, the most belligerent
of these expeditions was about equal to the
Putnam Phalanx, was equally armed, was
less warmly received, and as peaceably
retired to a neighboring State, but without
an invitation to call again; although soon
after it did make another call and in different
manner. Indeed sundry ** military expedi-
tions" under Taylor and Scott and Fremont
and Kearney a year later were sent out
into Mexican territory, were warned off by
the Mexican authorities, but betook them-
selves, not to Oregon, but (with much
bloodshed) to the Mexican capital, and to

» Foundations of American Foreign Policy ^ p. 71-

Boundaries 231

the strategic strongholds of her provinces.
So wide is the scope of meaning attachable
to the simple words by which a historian
may by insinuation make accoimts of national
activities fit a theory, without laying himself
open to conviction of direct misstatement,
or mistake.

The survey expeditions went armed, but
they were not therefore military expeditions
in a necessarily offensive sense. There are
grizzlies enough left in the regions surveyed
to insure travellers therein going armed to
the present day. The Santa F6 expedition,
which did not aim at Mexican territory,
was overcome by Indians. And, as if com-
ment of the sort was not unheard of by
Kendall, or in anticipation of the histories to
be written after him, he says:

It cannot be considered very strange that a
military force accompanied the expedition.
The number of men [about 300] was not really
larger than that which accompanied the earlier
Missouri enterprises ; and did not prove sufficient
against the Indians. These remarks I have made
to cotmteract assertions put forth by the ignorant
few, that the very fact of a military force being
sent with the expedition was a proof of its
hostile intentions. They would have had us,

2^2 The Mexican War

forsooth, start off with walking-sticks and um-^
brellas, and been scalped to a man in order to
prove our object pacific.*

It is not diffictilt to give the facts about
Fremont's expedition in brief. His appoint-
ment to the command had been in part
for political effect, and eventuated in a
great political effect not intended.

An expedition was fitted out for Oregon in the
suiter of 1843 ; and the conciliation of Benton
[his father-in-law] was one of the reasons which
induced the administration to make John C.
Fremont, apart from his own pre-eminent
fitness for the place, the commander of the
enterprise.2

In Fremont's third expedition his line of
observation would lead him to the Pacific
Ocean through a Mexican province — ^through
the desert parts first and the settled part
afterwards of the Alta California. Approach-
ing the settled parts of the province at the
commencement of winter, he left his equipment
of 60 men and 200 horses on the frontier and
proceeded alone to Monterey,

» Narrative of the Texan Santa Fi Expedition, George
Wilkins KendaU, New York, 1844, vol. i., p. 17.

2 Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 292.

Boundaries 233

where he obtained permission to pass the
winter and refresh his men and horses.
On the permission being revoked he started
for Oregon, but was recalled from the Great
Tlamath Lake by instructions from Mr.
Buchanan to watch and counteract any-
foreign scheme in California.^ The impor-
tance of Mr. Buchanan's reasons for such
instructions will be made obvious in the
next chapter; but the finish of the work of
the expedition may be given in this place,
although a climax in the recital of the most
important cause of the war is anticipated.

Butler, relating that ** war-ships of the
British and American navies were hovering
off the coast, each anxious to find an op-
portunity to land, run up a flag, and take
possession in the name of its government,'*
cites Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont for the
following statement: McNamara, a British
subject,

"working in the interest of a project originated
at Rome to checkmate the growing Protestant-
ism of the United States," had authority from the
Mexican Government to establish 1 0,000 families

« Thirty Years^ View, Thomas H. Benton, New York,
1854, vol. ii., pp. 688 and 689.

N

234 The Mexican War

with a grant of 13,500,000 acres, on the express
condition **to keep out the Americans." The
valley of the San Joaquin was selected for the
beginning of the settlement. General Castro
had armed the Mexican Califomians and had
engaged the Indian tribes to help to exterminate
the American settlers. Hence [says Butler] the
attempts to hasten the British Admiral, Sey-
mour, to land in Califomia.

Fremont's advance "routed the Mexican
force, broke up the junta, and on July 5, 1846,
having learned of the declaration of war
between Mexico and the United States,
Fremont ran up the stars and stripes." ^

There is an amusing feature in Prof.
Hart's use of Fremont's expedition as a
proof of the wicked and warlike conspir-
acy of the slaveholders. The people were
captivated by the brilliant, picturesque sur-
vey, ending in a short, decisive campaign —
great war news from the remotest point of
contact with an enemy, a port secured on the
disputed, far Pacific coast, opening a vista

1 Mexico in Transition^ William Butler, New York,
1892, pp. 87-90.

New York Evangelist , June 30, 1887. Paper of
Rev. Dr. Ellinwood to General Presbyterian Assembly,
1 88 1, is cited.

Boundaries 235

of empire a thousand times more important
than a dozen archipelagoes; and all with a
handful of exhausted engineers and rod-men.
The first great shock thereby came to the
citadel of slaveholding domination. The
Free-soilers, who were to break the road
for the election of Lincoln, made the pioneer
of California their pioneer in politics, and
followed him almost to a victory ; the * * Wide-
Awakes" — torch-bearers in the picturesque
campaign — singing with strained throats
and smoke-roughened voices, to the music
of Hail Columbia,

"He made the wide Pacific free,
The shores of that vast ocean free."

And there was no philosophical historian
by to tell them he was only the tool of a
slavery plot, or if there were, he was not
listened to by the great Republican party.

But it was not the survey expedition or
expeditions, nor boundary disputes, which
brought the great republic to blows.

When war broke loose, and of a sudden,
the surveyors came handy; and some of
them were in place to act with advantage.
But it was a matter of far greater significance

^36 The Mexican War

than more or less slave States,^ datms for
spoliations, river boundary, or Mexico's
resentment of military expeditions, which
roused the American nation to ihe war
point.

> "The annexation of Texas waa logical and delayed
only by the accidental connection with slavery."-*^
National Ideas Historically Traced^ Albert BttshncD
Hart, New York, 1907, p. 26.

CHAPTER XIII

FOREIGN INTERVENTION, AND ANNEXATION

IF Carl Schurz had been as universally
known as a historian as he was on the
stump or in statesmanship, the caricaturists
who formeriy delighted in distorting his
strong German face, and gleaming eye-
glasses, would have found a choice opportu-
nity for their unholy glee in his commentary
on Daniel Webster's simplicity and unsus-
pecting innocence amid diplomatic and
political intrigues. The honest and over-
impetuous Teuton with his hammer-and-
tongs hitting is a ludicrous tutor in craft
for the finished statesman and experienced
master in diplomacy.

As early as 1835 Webster had declared in the

Senate, that he had no doubt that attempts

would be made by some European government to

obtain a cession of Texas from the government

337

[

238 The Mexican War

of Mexico. It was natural to fear that if she
[Mexico] negotiated a loan in England some
condition fatal to the independence of Texas
might be demanded.*

And Schurz writes:

Webster said that if the people of Texas had
established a government de facto, it was the
duty of the United States to recognize it.
He was alarmed by rumors "that attempts
would be made by some European government
to obtain a cession of Texas from the government
of Mexico." It has frequently been observed
in the history of this Republic that those who
agitate for a territorial acquisition spread the
rumor that European powers are coveting it.
It is strange that Webster should have failed
to penetrate that shallow device.^

It would have indeed been strange, had
there been nothing in it but a shallow device,
and Webster had not penetrated it. There
was something more, which the multitude of
historians do not seem to have penetrated,

» Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner Tyler,
Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 271. That is, that Great
Britain would treat Texas just as later she did treat
Egypt.

2 Life of Henry Clay, Carl Schurz, Boston, 1887, vol.
ii., p. 91.

Intervention and Annexation 239

although facts were accessible, facts, how-
ever, which unfortunately do not corre-
spond with already accepted theories.

The danger grew more imminent every day
that foreign powers would step in.^

At this very moment Great Britain, whose

Rational policy the President regarded as one of

/aggrandizement, was engaged in the iniquitous

' war upon China, to force upon her the opium

trade.2

She was also engaged in the attempt to
f seize the Sandwich Islands.

Her attempts to make herself mistress
of Oregon had been such as to have aroused
the American people to the extent of electing
Polk on the issue of **the re-annexation of
Texas and fifty-four forty or fight." The
presence of a British squadron off Monterey,
and the scheme which Fremont defeated,
have been noticed in a preceding chapter;
also a plan for British anti-slavery men to
extend British influence into Texas. Years
after the close of the war of 1776 had seen
Great Britain, in defiance of the treaty of
Paris, holding forts and strategic positions

^Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, vol. ii., p. 255.
2 Ibid,, p. 272.

240 The Mexican War

on our western frontiers, including some in
Texas. ** The British ministry encouraged
General Miranda in his designs to revolu*
tionize Venezuela, aided the premature ex-
pedition which he fitted out in 1801, and
furnished the funds for that in 1806." ^

While the War of 181 2 was being brought
to a close by the treaty of Ghent, the British
diplomatists, by a trick in the wording of the
treaty, were endeavoring to seize the whole
of the territory of the Louisiana Purdiase.

" The British Government was signing a
treaty i^dth one hand, while with the other
behind its back it is despatching Paken-
ham's army to seize the fairest of our
possessions."

**I have learned from diplomatic sources
of the most tinquestionable authority" —
it is General Jackson, in the second term
of his presidency, who is talking, to Gov-
ernor, and Senator, William Allen of Ohio —
**that the British ministry did not intend
the treaty of Ghent to apply to the Loyisiana
Purchase. . . . The whole corporation of
them, from Pitt to Castlereagh, held that
we had no right to that territory."

» History of South America and Mexico, John M.
Niles, Hartford, 1838, vol. i., pp. 90 and 91.

Intervention and Annexation 241

To this Dr. Brady adds : * * It is indubitably
true that if the British had succeeded in
defeating Jackson and seizing Louisiana they
would have held it, treaty to the contrary
notwithstanding." 1 But Jackson at New
Orleans defeated Pakenham and the scheme
of the ministry with him.

An American Commodore, Thomas Jones,
had heard that there was an agreement for
British occupation of California; had landed
at Monterey, and had run up a flag. Mexico
had, in correspondence, made a declara-
tion of war; **but there was nevertheless
peace," Jones hauled down his flag within
twenty-four hours, and sailed away; and
the United States apologized. 2

All this the historians who are tied to
theories of a war for slavery extension ignore
or construe as evidence of provocation to
Mexico. But there is evidence not so easily
set aside.

** Mexico was in debt to British capitalists

> The True Andrew Jackson, Cyrus Townsend
Brady, Phila., 1906, pp. 105-8, quoting largely from
Colonel Augustus C. Buell.

» Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., pp. 266 and 267.

History of the United States^ James Schouler, Boston,
1889, vol. iv, p. 446.
16

242 The Mexican War

some ;£io,ooo,ooo, secured on lands in
Sonora, California, and New Mexico."

John Quincy Adams was as dull as Webster
in failing to perceive that dread of foreign
unfriendliness was a fake:

1 distrust the designs of Great Britain altor
gather. I believe their real policy far from desir-
ing the abolition of slavery either in oiir Southern
States or in Texas. I suspect on the contrary
that for a suitable equivalent they will readily
acquiesce both in the annexation of Texas, and
to the perpetuation of slavery, to weaken and
rule us. *

President Tyler was kept informed of the
machinations of the British envoy in Texas
to prevent annexation. ^ He had informed
the Senate that he had reason to fear foreign
occupation of Texas. ^

Benton complained that Texas was not
left to make peace with Mexico: ** under
the powerful mediation of Great Britain
and France the establishment of peace was

» Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 260.

2 Supra, "Mixed Motives," p. i57-

3 28th Congress, ist Session Documents, from which
the seal of secrecy had been removed.

Intervention and Annexation 243

certain."^ The sort of peace which would
exist under a French and English protectorate
was not likely to be pleasing to the United
States.

Houston played his diplomatic cards boldly.
He threatened the United States, in case
his overtures for annexation were rejected,
with an empire of which the eastern boim-
dary was to be the Rocky Motmtains, and
the northern British America, cutting off
Oregon. 2

** The project on foot was to establish a
French monarchy under Marshal Soult.**^
An tmpleasant outlook, and very likely only
conjecture, but not so wild as not to have
been realized almost exactly in the later king-
dom of Maximilian, and as much a war incen-
tive if mistakenly believed as though actual.

1 Thirty Years* View, Thomas H. Benton, New York,
1854, vol. ii., p. 644.

a "Houston directed his Secretary of State, Anson
Jones, to close with the offer" (of a virtual protectorate
by Great Britain and France to be established by
Lord Aberdeen's diplomatic act). . . "Jones however
suppressed the order, which did not come to the light
till four years later.** — Westward Extension, George
Pierce Garrison, New York, 1906, p. 154, citing Niles*
Register, Ixxiv., p. 413.

» Speech of Hon. Orlando B. Ficklin of Illinois, House
of Representatives, Washington, March 2, 1848.

244 The Mexican War

It is not necessary to. expend many words
in the reminder that the American nation
and people have always been quite sensitive
to any indications that a foreign nation was
likely to become a neighbor on this continent.
Before Monroe and Canning had conferred
on this subject, induced thereto by the threat
to free governments of the Holy Alliance,
the general doctrine had been announced.
October 29, 1808, President Jefferson wrote
to the Grovemor of- Louisiana:

The patriots of Spain have no warmer friends
than the administration of the United States.
We should be well satisfied to see Cuba and
Me3dcoremainintheir present dependence; but
very unwilling to see them in that of France or
England; we consider their interests and ours
as the same, and that the object of both must
be to exclude all European influence from the
Hemisphere.^

The attention of Mexico had been formally
called to the message of the President of the
United States of December 2, 1823, in which
the Monroe Doctrine, as it is generally called,
was stated. 2 The advice of Washington's

» Mexico and the United States, Gorham D. Abbot,
New York, 1869, p. 317.

2 Treaties and Conventions of the United States, Dept.
of State, 1889, p. 1357.

Intervention and Annexation 245

Farewell Address, to keep out of foreign
entanglements, had been so closely followed,
or had been so fully in accord with the
sentiment of the people, that it was with
reluctance that our diplomats committed
the nation to act in concert with another
nation, or put itself into a position which
might import the suspicion of any obligation
to it. The distaste of doing otherwise than
strictly minding one's own business had
resulted in an established foreign policy
which, expressed in euchre dialect, was,
'* I '11 go it alone."

Whether Houston liked the first office in
an independent republic so well as to have
lost his inclination to become only a citizen
or a Senator of the United States, and was
really willing to enter into a combination with
one or more European powers for guarantee
of Texan independence and promise of
Texan aggrandizement, may be left to
conjecture. The assistance from the United
States, or the friendly relations with her
administrations, had been sufficient to barb
the arrows of anti-slavery orators and the
historians, but had not served to make
Texas prosperous. It is not to be thrown
aside as an impossible notion, that Texas

246 The Mexican War

felt that foreign support was her necessity.
At all events, Houston went through the
motions of inviting the co-operation of
France and England; and Benton says he
had secured it.

If this was all intended as a bluS to startle
the American people, it must be admitted
that it was well played, and nations other
than the United States were led to the be-
lief that they could at least obtain a sphere
of influence in Texas,

After the treaty of annexation was rejected
in the United States Senate, June, 1844, Lord
Aberdeen proposed to pass a "diplomatic act"
in which five powers should be invited to par-
ticipate, to wit, Great Britain, France, the United
States, Texas, and Mexico, to guarantee peace
between Texas and Mexico.

The plan was cunningly conceived. The
British Foreign Office was always well
posted on the characteristics of an opposed
diplomacy, especially was it well informed
of the peculiar views of the United States;
Great Britain had come into too frequent
and violent contact with us not to know.

The United States would be invited to be a
party to this [diplomatic] act; but it was not

Intervention and Annexation 247

expected that they would accept the invitation. It
was believed Mexico would participate, but in
case of her refusal, England, France, and Texas
having passed the act as between themselves,
Mexico would be immediately forced to abide
its terms. The act if passed by only the three
powers would not be abandoned; it would be
maintained.^

That the United States would know of this
diplomatic act when invited to join in it, is a
matter of course; but the attention of the
Senate was called to it by Calhoun, who
represented that **this policy of Great
Britain made it necessary to annex Texas as
a measure of self-defence.** ^ Von Hoist with

»'*0n June 24, 1844, Aberdeen told Ashbel Smith
that England and France would be ready, if the treaty
of Annexation failed (and it had been already voted
down in the Senate June 8), to join the United States
and Texas in a diplomatic act settling the boimdaries
and guaranteeing the independence of the republic, in
which Mexico should if necessary be forced to acquiesce.*'
— Westward Extension , George Pierce Garrison, New
York, 1906, p. 154, citing "Smith to Jones, Jime 24,
1844, in MSS. Diplomatic Correspondence of Texas,
file 1714." "British Dipl.," Texas Historical Series,
No. I, published by the Texas Historical Society,
Galveston, Tex., 1876. Reminiscences of the Texas
Republic, Ashbel Smith, Dec. 13, 1875.

2 History of the United States, James Ford Rhodes,
New York, 1900, vol. i., p. 81, quoting Von Hoist's
Life of Calhoun, p. 232.

248 The Mexican War

his charming politeness says of this: "A lie
is a lie ; and Calhoun knew that there was not
one paxtide of truth in these assertions."
There is alwajrs room for differences of
opinion: "that is what makes horse-racesi" .
as they used to say in Kentucky; and Mr. . #^1^
Von Hoist has a right to his opinion that ; Pi.
there was no necessity of annexing Texas as '
a measure of self-defence. But a comparison
of the officially accurate report of Lord
Aberdeen's action with the Monroe Doctrine
and its notions of self-defence for the United
States would indicate not merely that
Calhoun also had a right to his opinion
without being charged in the grossest terms
with falsification, but that his opinion was
one likely to be shared by the vast majority
of the American people.

There are other evidences that the
administration had reliable information of
steps being taken by foreign nations which
would not be in conformity with our own
wishes as to foreign influence too near to
our possessions.

April 25, 1845, King, United States
Minister to Paris, wrote to Buchanan,
Secretary of State: ** There is scarcely any
sacrifice which England would not make

Intervention and Annexation 249

to prevent Texas from coming into our
possession."^

The British and French agents in Texas,
in conjunction with certain of the principal
officials of that country, were making efforts
to produce dissatisfaction with the terms of
annexation proposed by the American Grov-
emment March 25, 1845. ^

There was trouble brewing of which
Polk's administration was probably advised,
but in regard to which little would be
said outside of diplomatic circles so long as
war with Great Britain and Mexico at the
same time was not coveted. Friends of the
United States in Texas would have been
likely to see to it that the administration
knew confidentially what it was their interest
to know, and of Texas that it should be
known.

Among such friends was Ashbel Smith.
Bom in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1805, he
graduated from Yale in the class of 1824,
and from the Medical School in 1828, after
a course in law study. He became noted for
a medical practice in which he gave his

» Life of James Buchanan, George Ticknor Curtis,
New York, 1883, vol. i., p. 585.

^Ibid.

250 The Mexican War

services free, and for volunteer work during
epidemics in different cities. He served as a
volunteer through the Mexican War, and in
i860 he raised a regiment, the 2d Texas,
and served with the Confederates.

Houston sent him abroad as Minister
from Texas; and under the Jones presidency
he continued to represent Texas at various
times, in the United States, Great Britain,
France, and Spain. He was at one time the
Texan Secretary of State, and went as
Special Envoy to close up the Texan legations
in Europe after the annexation.

His testimony is full as to what was the
actual position of affairs relative to a foreign
protectorate of Texas; he says he personally
**saw Louis Philippe and Monsieur Guizot
and received the absolute assurance that
France would unite with the British Cabinet
in the * diplomatic act' proposed by Aber-
deen." The British Foreign Office at that
time ** sought only peace with Texas and a
free market for its cotton without having
to climb over a United States Tariff." But
it sought peace with a protectorate.

There had been other unpleasant features
in proposed foreign intervention.

It is hardly supposable that anti-slavery

Intervention and Annexation 251

societies in the United States, or Mr. Adams
— ^who had been in more or less correspon-
dence with the British and Foreign Anti-
slavery Society, — ^were kept informed of
some of its activities, as reported by Mr.
Smith. That society,

having its seat in London, . . . entered with
strange eagerness into the cause of Mexico, at
an early period, against Texas; they promoted
the building and fitting out of Mexican war-
steamers designed to ravage the coasts of
Texas. These war-steamers were light-draught
vessels built on models furnished by the Admi-
ralty; carried each two 68-pounder Paixhan
pivot guns besides lighter armament; and were
commanded by two distinguished British offi-
cers — Captains Cleveland and Charlwood of the
Royal Navy — ^by permission of the Admiralty,
to serve in the Mexican Navy; manned by
British seamen, recruited mostly in London
and Portsmouth.*

Should such an exhibition of British
neutrality seem incredible to any one, let
him read in McCarthy's History of Our
Own Times of the building and equipment
and manning of the Alabama. The stories

> Texas Hist. Series, No. i., Galveston, 1876; Remin-
iscences of the Texas Republic, Ashbel Smith, p. 39.

252 The Mexican War'

are almost identical except for change of
dates.

There was plenty of reason for John C.
Calhoun — ^whatever his sins against the
republic, and he surely had enough to
account for, — ^there was reason enough tor
any citizen, to believe that the danger of a
European government or protectorate of
Texas, or California, indeed of both, was so
great as to make it necessary in self-defence
to undertake the protection of Texas our-
selves, and not leave it to another. At any
rate the representatives of the people appear
to have so believed; and the nation which
for nine years had refused to take Texas
into the Union, whose Senate, April 22, 1844,
had voted by more than a two-thirds
majority not to ratify a treaty to annex
Texas, had, on May i, 18^, learned so much
of some new reason, Lord Aberdeen's ** diplo-
matic act*' or something else, that Congress
passed a joint resolution to annex Texas,
with the botmdary of the Rio Grande still
claimed by her; virtually joining war with
Mexico, who had formally declared that such
a resolution would be regarded as equivalent
to a declaration of war.

There had been plenty of other provo-

Intervention and Annexation 253

cations, motives, causes for war; and, with
a patience almost unparalleled in the history
of nations, the great republic had forborne
to join issue of battle with a weaker neighbor;
had refused to extend slave territory; had
refused to punish insults to the flag, seizure
of ships, murder and robbery of citizens;
had refused to collect just and long-past-due
claims for spoliations except in court of
arbitration; or to do battle for unsurveyed
boundaries. But a French and Mexican
empire or a British suzerainty on our im-
mediate borders the United States would
not have. Texas was made a State of the
Uiiion, Fremont was ordered to the Pacific,
and the war which had been held back for
a decade, as too inglorious with a weaker
nation, was at last offered unhesitatingly
to three.

CHAPTER XIV

THE WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

IT has been very generally asserted by
historians that, all else having failed, the
Mexican War was finally forced upon Mexico
by the advance of General Taylor to the
',Rio Grande. Tyler asserts that ** there was
;no necessary connection at all between
0,nnexation and a war with Mexico. War
.was precipitated by Taylor's advancing his
troops to the Rio Grande where the Mexi-
cans had a few scattered settlements/'^
Noll adds to a similar assertion: *' He sought
the opportunity to cross the Rio Grande and
take possession of Matamoras,'' ^ although,
as events proved, the opportunity sought
him, at Resaca de la Palma. Schurz waxes

1 Letters and Times of the Tylers, Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 416.

2 From Empire to Republic, Arthur Howard Noll,
Chicago, 1903, pp. 160 and 161.

254

The War and Its Consequences 255

oratorical and says: ** The country between
the Nueces and the Rio Grande had been
wildly claimed by the Texans, although
really looked upon as, at most, disputed terri-
tory. But Polk's administration assumed
to decide the botmdary question by force."
"The eastern bank" [of the Rio Grande]
**was dotted with Mexican villages and
military posts." ^

None of these posts were in possession of
Mexico 2; not an armed Mexican had been
allowed to remain east of the Rio Grande
for nine years, except for the brief period
required to hunt him out; but it is easy for
theorists to forget it.

Distinction should be made between the
Rio Grande to El Paso, and the Rio Grande

« The Life of Henry Clay, Carl Schurz, Boston, 1887,
vol. ii., p. 273.

2 The Secretary of War, Mr. Marcy, in ordering
General Taylor to the Rio Grande, July 30, 1845, did
except from his instructions to "extend protection up
to this boundary, . . . posts in the actual possession
of Mexican forces." But I have seen no account of
Taylor having found any. The inference from General
Grant's memoirs is that there were none observable
from the line of march. Also see speech of Hon. James
Dixon of Connecticut in the House of Representatives,
a brilliant Whig attack on Polk, exhibiting that Taylor
was ordered to the Rio Grande by his first orders.

\

2s6 The Mexican War

del Norte above that village. The country
west of the del Norte Texas could not control
at that period, nor could Mexico. But that
does not prove that Texas had not enforced
her possession between the Nueces and the
Rio Grande.

** Jiily 30 [184S], General Taylor was ordered
to defend Texas as far as occupied by
Texans." August 23d he was instructed that
if a large Mexican army should cross the
Rio Grande, and August 30th that if there
were an attempt to cross by a large Mexican
force, the President would regard it as an
act of war. Mr. Schurz adds another scrap
of history by innuendo: ** Taylor began to
understand what was required of him."
In proof of which he says: *'In October
Taylor asked more definite instructions.' ' *

Thus the question of boundary is renewed
in such shape that it must be met in a new
point of view, in connection with Taylor's
occupation of the Nueces territory and his
advance. Schurz continues :

Texas never succeeded in establishing her
claim to territory west of the Nueces, although
she had tried to seize Santa F6, and had failed

» Life of Henry Clay, Carl Schurz, Boston, 1887, vol.
ii., pp. 274 and 275.

The War and Its Consequences 257

lamentably. It is as certain as anything can
be that the Texan boundary line never had
been, and was not at the time of the annexation,
the Rio Grande. ^

Orators of presidential campaigns have
been proverbially surest of doubtful points;
but that is not good form in the historian.
Kendall tells truly what was the expedition
to Santa F€ — ^which made no attempt at
seizure.2

And Santa F6 had about as much to do
with the dispute concerning the boundary
west of the Nueces as St. Louis did. Santa
F6, in what is now New Mexico, is on the
east of the Rio Grande del Norte near the
springs of the Rio Pecos and of the Canadian
branch of the Arkansas; and the failure of
Texas to occupy it was easily understood
when the United States was later com-
pelled to build a dozen forts from Fort
Fillmore to Forts Union and Defiance, to
protect that coimtry from the Indians.
Santa F6 is about 11 00 miles up river from
Taylor's point of contact with Mexican

> Life of Henry Clay, vol. ii., p. 178.

2 Very likely because it was not strong enough, after
the Indians had well-nigh destroyed it.
17

258 The Mexican War

forces at Palo Alto, and not far from 900 miles
to the north of the northernmost sources
of the Nueces.

It is true, as Garrison says, that ** Texas
had failed to establish its jurisdiction over
such Mexican settlements as lay along that
river on its hither side." So it is true
that neither had Mexico established her
jurisdiction there, or, it may be said, any-
where else, so far as exercising any govern-
ment was concerned.^

In much the same sense it is true that
there are tracts in the Adirondacks and in
the Katahdin region over which New York
and Maine, or the United States, have even
hitherto ** failed to establish their juris-
diction.'' But of the tract below El Paso,
between the Nueces and the Rio Grande,
although the Texans had not interfered
with the few miserable Mexican settlers —
** many of them hiding under ground for fear
of the Indians,'' as General Grant tells us —
it was within the military jurisdiction of
Texas; and had been so since San Jacinto.

When Tyler, as he submitted in his Texas
treaty message, *' left open the question of

» Unless possibly in enforcing some taxes or church
tithes when the Texans did not happen to be looking.

The War and Its Consequences 259

boundary purposely for negotiation with
Mexico," Schouler says: ** This meant that
he adopted the fraud of the Texas revolu-
tionists in voting to themselves the whole
domain of Mexico to the Rio Grande, whereas
the original and uniform southwestern boun-
dary of the Texas province was admitted to
be the river Nueces. " ^ In this short sentence
there are three unwarrantable assumptions
in the three words **fraud," * 'revolutionists,''
and 'Voting," the latter ignoring the Velasco
treaty, and nine years' occtipation, as it is /
extremely convement for Mr. Schouler's
school of objectionists to do. But he quotes
Austin as his authority for his theory of
boundary, and Austin, when correctly quoted,
is an accurate witness. Mr. Schouler of
course intended to quote correctly, but
apparently was misled by some publishers'
date. For his authority he adds a note : * * See
Austin's map of Texas published in 1837."
Now, if Austin had made a map in 1837
which set the boundary of Texas on the
Nueces, it would mean that he acknowl-
edged the invalidity of the peace of Velasco J '^ •
and the boimdary therein mentioned. If f

> History of the United States, James Schouler, Bos- xV^/sA'^'^'^^
ton, 1889, vol. iv., p. 519. ^ yfi^r^

.o-rr^^-^'-f^^^iu

.-P"

»^

26o The Mexican War

he made it prior to May 14, 1836, he would
at any later date have said of his map, as
Napoleon said of an old map of Europe,
**But we have changed all that." In the
**List of American Maps in the Library of
Congress, P. Lee Phillips, F. R. G. S., Chief
of the Division of Maps and Charts, Wash-
ington, 1 90 1," there is no mention of any
map of Austin's published in 1837. Prob-
ably a date of republication, or of a second
edition, may have been given to the copy
Mr. Schouler consulted, which it would seem
probable must have been a copy of that
indexed in the Congressional Library as a
**Map of Texas with parts of adjoining
states. Compiled by Stephen F. Austin, en-
graved by John & Wm. W. Warr, Philadel-
phia,3ox24j, Philadelphia, H.S. Tanner, 1836.
Note: Copyrighted 1835 by H. S. Tanner.''

Unless Austin hastened to get out a
fresh map to emphasize the old original
boundary (for Schouler is right as to the
boundary of Mexican provinces) and to set
himself down in record evidence as agreeing
that it was ''uniform" after a splendid
campaign had removed it, the Austin map
cannot be said to show what was the Texan
boundary in 1837 or 1846.

The War and Its Consequences 261

So far from the left bank of the Rio
Grande being ** dotted with military posts,"
all the Mexican military posts, important
enough to be indicated on a map, in that ^
section or near it, were Manclova, Santa
Rosa, San Fernando, and Rio Grande, pro-
tecting the Mexican frontier ; and they were
all four located in the hill country well to the
westward or Mexican side of the Rio Grande ;
while the tract lying between that river
and the Nueces, instead of being ** dotted
with Mexican villages," has a legend printed
across it in Austin's map of 1835: ** Droves
of Wild Horses"^; also across Coahuila and
Tamaulipas, neighboring Mexican provinces,
is printed "Droves of Wild Horses."

**The territory claimed by Texas was
bounded west by the river Bravo del Norte
[Rio Grande]." 2

But questions of boundary between Texas^
and Mexico are futile. They had already /
been determined, so far as the right of/

« North Mexican States and Texas, Hubert Howe
Bancroft, San Francisco, 1882-90, vol. li., p. 79.

History of Texas , David B. Edward, with map,
Cincinnati, 1836, Hartford, 1837.

2 History of South America and Mexico^ John M.
Niles, Hartford, 1838, vol. i., p. 213.

/

262 The Mexican War

American officials to question them was
concerned, by the admission of Texas with
the expressed claim of the boimdary of the
Rio Grande. Furthermore the so-called
disputed territory was now a tax district
of the United States by act of Congress.^
Neither Polk nor Taylor was in a position
to dispute its nationality. A tax collector
for it had been appointed and his appoint-
ment confirmed by the Senate. If Tyler was
at fault in the matter as chief executive, it
was for leaving the question of boimdary
open for negotiation at all; although the
resolution by which Texas was annexed
was conditioned on **the adjustment by this
government of all questions of boundary
that may arise with other governments." 2
As soon as annexation was accomplished,
indeed as soon as Congress had passed the
resolution proposing to Texas terms of
annexation, the two nations were in a state
of war by virtue of the Mexican declaration
through Bocanegra. It was the duty of an
executive to protect at once that territory
and its inhabitants whether in Texan settle-

» Act, December i, 1845.

2 28th Congress, 2d session, House Journal, p. a6o.

The War and Its Consequences 263

ments or Mexican. He had no option. And \
since Mexico had declared that annexation f
would be regarded as a declaration of war, J
there would have been no breach of inter- I
national etiquette had an expedition been |
launched at once against the Mexican cap-
ital itself.

Yet in the hope of peace ,SlidglL*was sent
on his special mission, and Taylor was
only given instructions **to occupy the
disputed territory to the same extent for
defence and protection that the Texans had
occupied it." But the Paredes government
sent back Slidell; the Mexican minister
had long ago demanded his passports; the
American delegation in Mexico was notified
that Mexico closed all relations with the
United States; this was formally made
known to the other foreign representations;
proclamations summoned the Mexican people
to take up arms; and a thousand regulars
of the Mexican army were ordered to the
frontier of Texas. Nevertheless Taylor
was held in check. The instructions stood
(October 16, 1845, Secretary of War William
L. Marcy to General Zachary Taylor) :
** Probably no serious attempt will be made
by Mexico to invade Texas although she

a64 The Mexican War

continues to threaten incursions." Mexico
had warred with Houston by proclamations
for so many years as to have established a
character for waging that sort of hostilities.

Meantime Fremont's little company of
engineers made safe the American settlers
on the Pacific— or with the naval squadron
at hand virtually had them under protection.
When Slidell was definitely sent home August
I, 1846, General S. W. Kearney, pushing
into New Mexico, took possession of its
capital, August i8th. The manner of his oc-
cupation is too illustrative of why American
institutions take root and grow where
Spanish domination withers, not to demand
space for the telling. September 26th
(within forty days) he proclaimed an organic
law and general code, compiled by Colonel A.
W. Doniphan, ist Missouri Mounted Volun-
teers, and private Willard P. Hull of his regi-
ment; part Mexican laws with modifications
made necessary by the United States Constitu-
tion ; part laws of Missouri territory ; part laws
of Texas, or Texas and Coahuila; part from
Missouri statutes; and part from the Liv-
ingston code.

The chances for a war by paper proclama-
tions only on the part of Mexico, diminished.

The War and Its Consequences 265

On receiving news of the treaty [of annexa-
tion] Santa Anna made preparations for a
vigorous and extensive invasion of Texas,
Adrian WoU, the commander at Mier on the
Rio Grande, issued an order that "any person
without discrimination of sex or nationality
who should be found within one league of the
left bank of the river should be shot as a traitor
on a stmmiary court-martial."^

It was fully time for the United States to
protect the inhabitants of its territory, or
of a disputed territory, or an enemy's terri-
tory. Even a river bank ** dotted with
Mexican villages," as Schurz says it was,
would be entitled to protection from Mexican
clemency as administered by Santa Anna
and Adrian WoU, if within reach of civilized
soldiers.

And the only feasible way of extending
that protection was by advancing a little
army like Taylor's to a position where his
skirmishers, reinforced by gimboats, could
have a great river in their front.

When the last hope of the success of
Slidell's mission expired (and he was not
even permitted to submit his credentials to

> Letters and Times of the Tylers^ Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, Richmond, 1885, vol. ii., p. 334.

266 The Mexican War

Paredes^), August i, 1846, Taylor was again
ordered to the boundary. As commander
of a department, he would have been justified
in taking the responsibility of this advance
without waiting for instructions, or even in
disobedience of them, when WoU issued his
manifesto; it was so obvious that he could
not perform the main duty assigned to him
with a base at Corpus Christi. Besides need-
ing better sanitation for his command,^
Taylor found the port of Corpus Christi
otherwise impracticable as a base. To begin
with, a look at the map of Texas is enough
to show it to be evidently unsafe from
the point of view of naval strategy. With
the exception of about fifty miles in all, the
coast of Texas is screened by islands. From
the western end of the Laguna del Madre
stretching eastward a hundred miles with its
estuaries (the Salt Lagoon, Nueces Bay, and
Corpus Christi Bay), the bays of Aranzas,
St. Charles, Espiritu Santo, Matagorda,

» Probably by the influence of the British minister.
See Westward Extension, George Pierce Garrison, New
York, 1906, p. 225.

2 ** You will occupy on or near the Rio Grande del
Norte such a site as will consist with the health of
your troops." — Bancroft, Assistant Secretary of War,
to Taylor, June 15, 1845.

The War and Its Consequences 267

Galveston, and its flanking West Bay and
East Bay, and Sabine Lake and Pass, are
screened by outlying beaches or islands in
such manner as to afford perfect shelter
and hiding for hostile or pirate craft, of light
draught and swift, such as were constructed
for Mexican use by the British Anti-Slavery
Society, capable of destroying transports
or, in numbers and issuing from tortuous
and shallow inlets, capable of attacking
unexpectedly and overpowering ships-of-
war.

There was no port safe, no water fit for
manoeuvring a fleet, short of Brazos Santiago
and Point Isabel.

The landing at Corpus Christi was eighteen
miles up a shallow channel and the outer
channel was impassable for vessels draw-
ing over three feet of water. ^ "When near
Matamoras General Taylor with the cavalry
went forward to Paint Isabel to meet the
transports which ^rere expected to arrive
with troops and stores. Finding these already
in harbor he immediately established Point
Isabel as a depot of supplies."

Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma were

» Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, New York, 1895,
vol. i., p. 39.

ads The Mexican War

battles fought to repel attempts to cut him
off from this base.^

"He was to hold Point Isabel and maintain
the use of the Rio Grande for navigation."^
"Ships of war were to cover the base at
Point Isabel." 5

To secure a practicable base was Taylor's
object in selecting his position on the Rio
V Grande, and not, as has been frequently
asserted, an attack on Matamoras, which
was relatively of no importance, although
he did in one of his despatches inforib the
Secretary of War that Matamoras was
• within range of his guns. The attacks on
his communications Taylor promptly re-
. pulsed and punished at Palo Alto and
XResaca de la Palma; and Polk in his message
to Congress very truthfully and properly
described the ambuscade and destruction of
a small body of Tayjor's dragoons by a su-
perior Mexican force— ^hich was the open-
ing of those battles, and occurreci in a tax
district of the United States — ^as "the
shedding of American blood on. American,

1 History of the War with Mexico, Horatio O. Ladd,
New York, 1883, p. 4a.

2 Ibid., p. 38.

« The History of the Mexican War, Gei^ral Cadmus
M. Wilcox, Washington, 1892, p. 32.

The War and Its Consequences 269

soil"; and deserved nothing of the obloqj^"""''^
thrown upon him for **an untruthful aSa
frantic war message," a message which was
approved by the House of Representatives
by a vote of 174 to 14 and by the Senate
40 to 2.*

The war once begun was rapidly, skilfully,
and bravely fought to a finish against enor-
mous odds in numbers; against Mexican
regtdars; against great natural obstacles;
in the enemy's territory. From a purely
military point of view it has not been often
disputed that the Mexican War was a glorious
triumph of American soldiership and leader-
ship. There is no occasion for a review of the
reports of it. The full story of its campaigns
is recorded ably and satisfactorily by General
Wilcox, General Scott, Documents of 24th
to 30th Congresses, Professor Garrison, and
the complete bibliography in his Westward
Extension.

So far from this war having been an
incentive to, or in any way bringing on, the
later desperate war with the Confederacy

» The vote in the House was 1 74*to 14 on the resolution
proclaiming war. But 65 had voted for an amendment
refusing an indorsement of Polk's reasons given in
his message. — Speech of Hon. James Dixon, House jf
Representatives, Jan. 24, 1848.

270 The Mexican War

9(.the Southern States, the intimate knowl-
edge it gave to the officers of each other
and of the troops from the two sections
of the country which they led in Mexico did
much, though unavailingly, to avert the
later strife, and to advise each section of the
other's resources. And tluough the four
years of battle for the nation's life, the
brotherhood and respect, amounting in many
cases to almost reverence, maintained by and
between the leaders who inevitably rose from
their lieutenancies and captaincies in Mexico
to the command of corps and armies and
departments in the war for the Union,
became, especially among the West Point
graduates, the greatest of all the forces which
held enraged sections to amenities of civilized
war and unexampled forbearance on either
side at its close ; on the one side a forbearance
from punishment or requirement of; indem-
nity; on the other a refraining from guerilla
fighting and an honorable respect of parole.
It was the Mexican War, as an early school
of American soldiership, which has its fruition
idealized in such a picture as Mrs. Longstreet
paints of Grant with his hand on Long-
street's shoulder at Appomattox, saying,
* * Well, Old Pete, how about a game of poker ? * '

The War and Its Consequences 271

One must look deeper than k) the rude
familiarity this might suggest to an outsider.
In a moment the broken-hearted Lieutenant-
General of the Confederacy was a boy once
more, the interval of years and hostility was
bridged, victor and vanquished were once
again in the palaces of the Montezumas,
comrades, no longer foes, nor under restraint
of official etiquette.

From Cerro Gordo to Churubusco covered
the time only from April 18 to August 20,
1847; 3^d Mexico was prostrate before
the power of the United States. Unwilling
to further impoverish and wound a con-
quered adversary, General Winfield Scott
himself proposed an armistice ; and Nicholas
P. Trist, who had been present with the army
from its first advance — so great had been
Polk's desire to save the Mexicans from
the consequences of the corruption and
folly of their officials, — ^was sent as a com-
missioner to treat with Mexico for terms of
peace. ^

It is of no profit to review the proposals

» Life of James Buchanan^ George Ticknor Curtis,
New York, 1883, vol. i., p. 601.

Westward Extension, George Pierce Garrison, New
York, 1906, p. 248, citing Senate Documents, 30th
Congress, vii., No. 52, pp. 85-89.

27a The Mexican War

and counter-proposals, the gist of the mat-
ter being that there .was no conclusion
reached; and General Scott, learning that
Santa Anna with his habitual treachery-
was making use of the interval of armistice
to strengthen his fortifications, termixuited it
September 7th.

September 13th, Qiapultepec was taken by
storm, and September 14th, the<3ity of Mex^
ico was captured by assault. Texas and Cali-
fornia and the intervening territory were
taken into the United States, and twenty
millions of dollars paid to Mexico, less three
millions of claims tiie pa3mient of which
was assumed and made by the United States ;
the war thus ending with the treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The
Texan claim of a boundary on the Rio
Grande was maintained.*

On this Dr. Brady indignantly and most

i Treaties and Conventions of the United States with
other Powers y p. 682.

Mr. Henry M. Morfitt was American Agent in Texas.
He writes to the Secretary of State, August 27, 1836:
"The Rio Grande was made the western line by impli-
cation, as Article III. of the agreement stipulates that
the Mexican troops should evacuate the territory of
Texas, passing to the other side of the Rio Grande del
Norte" (British and Foreign State Papers^ London,
1853, vol. XXV., p. 1365).

The War and Its Consequences 273

unjustifiably comments: **In an attempt
to justify a high-handed proceeding and
change a theft into a forced sale, he [Nicholas
P. Trist, United States Commissioner] was
authorized to offer a sum not exceeding
twenty millions of dollars."^ Dr. Brady's
language is, from any point of view, amus-
ingly ill-chosen; there is nothing furtive or
concealed, or of the nature of theft, in a
high-handed proceeding; and a victor's
treatment of the vanquished and prostrate
is necessarily high-handed, if it is only to
lift up the fallen.

Indeed, Dr. Brady virtually retracts his
accusation:

Inasmuch as we had the power to impose our
own terms upon Mexico, which was completely
prostrate and absolutely helpless, there is a
certain amount of magnanimity in our volun-
teering the sum of money in payment for
territory we had taken, and for which we need
not have paid a cent. 2

In fact not only California, New Mexico,
and Texas — sections of territory which
Mexico had exhibited her total incapacity

» Conquest of the Southwest, Cyrus Townsend Brady,
New York, 1905, p. 230.-
a Ibid., p. 246.
18

;/

274 The Mexican War

to govern — ^were in possession of the United
States at the close of the war; but her capital,
and every post capable of being made a
strategic base, she had lost beyond hope of
recovery, unless, possibly, Oaxaca under
Juarez should be excepted. Commodores
Stockton, Shubrick, and Biddle held every
Mexican port, and were in mastery of her
whole coast. Every foot of her soil or waters
that Mexico holds to-day was a free gift from
(the United States. And so broken and
dissolved were her institutions of govern-
ment in 1848 — ^if she may, strictly speaking,
be said to have ever had any, — so irretrieva-
bly ruined were her finances, and instru-
mentalities for collecting any, that it was
necessary to put a provisional government
temporarily and immediately in funds for
Mexico's housekeeping, or be responsible
for utter riot and anarchy in the districts
given back to her. Furthermore, as the
imperfect government of Mexico had long
exhibited an entire lack of capacity to provide
a decent administration (certainly for regions
so far remote from its capital as were Cali-
fornia, Colorado, and Texas), to have left
them in the possession of Mexico — and
Mexico bankrupt — would not only have been

The War and Its Consequences 275

inhumane to the inhabitants of those regions
and their neighbors, but would have been ^
to invite their cession to foreign powers
for necessary loans; indeed, with Mexico
indebted in the sum of £10,000,000 to
Great Britain, it may be said that the
United States took the mortgaged pro-
vinces from Great Britain rather than from
Mexico.

Three times in her history has the United
States made Mexico a present of herself —
yes, four: Once when volunteers from the
United States helped her throw off the yoke
of Spain, and prompt recognition of her
attempted republic discouraged Spanish re-
subjugation; again when she was set up in
business by the reverse of a demand for
indemnity in the peace of Guadalupe Hidalgo ;
again when at her own peril the United States
from 1857 to 1861 held Mexico imder a vir-
tual protectorate against half of Europe^;
and yet again when Sheridan massed a
matchless army of veterans on the Rio

» " During the whole of Buchanan's administration
our relations with. Mexico were in a complicated and
critical position, in consequence of the internal con-
dition of that country and of the danger of interference
of foreign powers." — Life of James Buchanan, George
Ticknor Curtis, New York, 1883, vol. ii., p. 315.

276 The Mexican War

Gilande, and restored Mexico to herself,
free from the grip of France and Maximilian.

This review will have failed of its purpose
if it shall not have prompted the investi-
gation of some future historian, and the
questioning of some honest American boys,
whether the treatment of the people of
Mexico by the United States (for it is always
with peoples and not with their despotic
rulers that the people of the United States
affiliate) has not been marked and exceptional
in the record of nations, for friendliness and
forbearance to a weaker power.

Nor will this review have attained its
end unless some warning be served upon dis-
tinguished writers — especially such authors
as the labors of professorships hamper in
the labor of independent historical investi-
gation — not to be blinded by the glamour of
great names and the opinions of great and
noble men, and not to follow the multi-
tude into the error of construing facts into
conformity with somebody's preconceived
theory.

INDEX

277

INDEX

Abbot, G. D., Mexico and U. S. cited, 73, 244
Aberdeen, Lord, proposal for Texan protectorate, 246,

247
Adams, Pres. J. Q., bias on Mexican War, i; cited, 45;
attempts to purchase Texas, 86-7 ; on attempts to
bring on war, 144; denied, 145; characterized, 169-
70; Diary not authority for censures, 171; as to
foreign designs on Texas, 242
Agua Dolce, butchery at, 188-9
Aguayo, Marquis de, rule in Mexico, 93, 94
Alamo, the, defence of, 114-18; ** Remember," 117, 153

Amijo, , hideous savagery, 91 ; cruelty, 179

Anti-Slavery Society, British and Foreign, aid to Mex-
ico against Texas, 251
Archer, B. T., 59

Arizpe, Ramon, and Mexican constitution of 1824, ^4
Armijo, see Amijo
Austin, Moses, career, 61-2

Austin, S. F., sides with Mexico, 54; career, 62 if.;
drafts constitution of 1824, ^4* 90 ; on Indian
ravages, 95, 96-7; works for separate government
for Texas, is imprisoned, loi; raises revolt, 103-4;
military acts, 106; commissioner to U. S., 106;
great speech at Nashville cited, 42, 62, 65, 70, 95,
96-7, hi; Texan Secretary of State, 128; map of
Texas, 259-60

Bacon, Leonard, denounces missionaries taking slaves
with them, 73

279

28o Index

Bancroft, Geoige, favors Texas annexation, sends Tay-
lor to Rio Grande, 14; authority for Polk's policy,
9zo; orders to Taylor, 966

Bancroft, H. H., Hist. Pacific States cited, 44» 63, 2x5-16;
N, Mex. States and Texas cited, a6z

Barb^-Marbots, P. de, on Louisiana Purchase, 224

Barradas, Isidro, expedition against Mexico, 80

Bennett, Major, treatment by Mexicans, z8i

Benton, T. H., on J. M. Niles, 25 ; deprecates "manifest
destiny," 34; Thirty Years* View cited, 147. 154,
a33. a43-4. 246

Bocanegra, , Mexican minister, 203, 205

Boundary doctrines, 215 ff.

Bowie, James, early career, 57; at Mission Conoepcion,
Z06; wins the "grass fight,*' 107; killed at the
Alamo, 1x7

Brady, C. T., bias on Mexican War, x; Conquest of
Southwest cited, 31, 40, 43, 55, 62, 195, 196,
206, 208, 209, 210 (on Polk); True Andrew Jack'
son cited, 241 (on Louisiana), 273 (on terms of
peace)

Buchanan, Pres. James, as diplomatist, 168-9; instruc-
tions to Slidell, 227; to Fremont, 233

Burleson, Edward, succeeds Austin, 107; captures San
Antonio, 108; succeeded by Houston, 114

Burnet, D. G., 59

Burton, I. W., and his "horse marines," 128

Bustamante, Anastasio, Niles on his dictatorship, 27;
set up by Santa Anna, 82, 99; cruelties and depo-
sition, 82-3; oppresses Texas, 99

Butler, William, Mexico in Transition cited, 73, 233-4

Calhoun. J. C, on J. M. Niles, 24; on foreign protec-
torate of Texas, 248

California, assumed intrigues to obtain, 226 ff.; Fre-
mont's expedition to, 232-4

Index

Calleja, P. del R., cruelties, 78-9

Canada, good U. S. relations with, 39

Castrillo, General, intercedes for prisoners, ii5-i<r

Chambers, T. J., 59

Channing, Edward, on Louisiana Purchase, 224

Chapultepec monument, 16

Charles V., Emperor, reform decree of 1542, 75

Clay, Henry, instructions to purchase Texas, 86-8; on
decadence of slavery, 151

Coahuila, Texas joined to, 97; anarchy in, loi

Connecticut favors Texan recognition, 136

Corpus Christi, defects as a base, 266-7

Cos, , Santa Anna's lieutenant, loi; attempts

treachery, 103; marches on Bexar, 104; at San
Antonio, 106; captured by Burleson, 108; generous
terms to, 108-9; breaks parole and takes field, 122

Crockett, David, early career, 5 7 ; killed at the Alamo, 117

Cuba, reasons for recognizing, weaker than for Texas,
136 ^.,159-163

Curtis, G. T., Life of Bttchanan cited, 169, 211, 249, 271

Cushing, Caleb, mention, 14

Dickins, Asbury, chief clerk State Dept., 193, 194
Dixon, James, cited, 269

Edward, D. B., Hist. Texas cited, 261

Edwards, Hayden, 54

Ellis, Powhatan, action as charg^ d'affaires on Mexico,
167, 171-2, 189^., 194, 199

Elson, H. W., Hist. U. S. cited, 44, 167 (on Mexican
claims), 196 (on Gaines* "invasion"), 206, 210 (on
Polk)

England, international results of constitutionalism, 35;
wars compared with U. S., 40; designs on California,
234; on Texas, 237 ^.; on Sandwich Islands, 239;
on Oregon, 239 ; on Louisiana Purchase, 240-1 ; con-
duct as to Venezuela, 246 ; mortgage on Mexico, 275

2^2 Index

Fannin, J. W., at Mission Concepcicm/ xo6; evacuatea
Goliad, X x8; butchery of forces, 1x9

Pilisola, Gen., , accepts Texan treaty, X96

Fiske, John, on purchase of Indian lands, 37

Forsyth, John, Sec. State, diplomatic conduct, xpo-a,

194-S. 199
France, i>art in proposed protectorate of Texas, 950
^'Predonian War," 54
Fr6mont, J. C, expedition to California, 230-239^.,

964; personal results, 935

Gaines, Gen. £. P., "invasion" of Mexico, 47, X94 ff.

Galvez, J086 de, beneficent administration, 76

Garrison, G. P., on S. P. Austin, 63; Saiuhwestward
Extension cited, 196, X55, x6i, xqx, 198, 199,
97X; Texas cited, X97, 909; on Tyler vs. Polk,
i^; on Powhatan BUis and Mexican claims, X7X,
X9X; on Gaines' action, 909; on Slidell's mission,
9x9; on foreign protectorate of Texas, 943, 247;
on Rio Grande boundary, 258; on British intrigue,
266

Gates, , torture by Mexicans, 180-1

Goliad, captured by Texans, 109; massacre after evacu-
ation of, 119

Golpin, , murdered by Mexican commander, 180

Gonzales, Mexican assault on, 105 ; men from, join band
at the Alamo, 115

Gordon, J. B., on A. S. Johnston, 58

Gorostiza, M. E. de, Mexican plenipotentiary, 192 ff.,
200

Grant, Dr., , horrible murder at Agua Dolce, 189

Grant, U. S., bias on Mexican War, i, 11-12; mention,
14; on Taylor's army, 48; Memoirs cited, 52, 267;
on A. S. Johnston, 59; on Monterey, 108; on tract
east of Rio Grande, 258

Griffith, , murder by Mexicans, 180

Index 283

Guadalupe Hidalgo, treaty of, 38, 272
Guerrero, Vicente, 43; set up by Santa Anna, 81;
forced out and murdered, 8a

Hart, A. B., change of view on Texas, 154, 910, 936;

old view, 226-7; on California, 227-8, 228-9, ^3^
Hawley, J. R., on U. S. fairness, 19
Herrera, J. J. de, Mexican president, 208-9
Hoist, H. von, on Mexican War, 2; criticised by L. G.
Tyler, 145; on Ellis' Mexican diplomacy, 167; on
bogus claims, 1 68 ; on foreign protectorate of Texas,
247-8
Hopkins, J. H., on Whig platform of 1844, 156
Houston, "Sam," figments concerning Texas career,
44-7; real career, 57-8; command in 1835, 106;
succeeds Burleson, 114; orders Goliad and San An-
tonio evacuated, 114; retreat justified, 120-1 ; pres-
ident of Texas, 128; paper war with Santa Anna,
186, 264; retreat through Texas, 197; threatens
foreign protectorate of Texas, 243, 245-6
Humboldt, A. von, Essai Politique cited, 73
Hunt, Memucan, 3; Texan minister to U. S., 97; com-
missioner, 128

Indians, fairness of national dealings with, 36-9; of
Mexico, danger to Texas, 70, 92-6, 102, 127, 149,
186, 197 ff-, 199 (commissioned by Mexico). See
also Mexico.

Iturbide, Agustin, 64; treaty of 1821, 79; seizure of
authority, 79-80; supplanted, 81

Jackson, Andrew, "intrigue" with Houston, 46-9; pol-
itics of his administration, 49-50; hesitates over
recognition of Texas, 129; suspicion of motives un-
just, 130; ix>ssible motives, 132-3, 134-5; reports
Texas claim of boundary, 135; and close of diplo-

384 Index

Jackflon, Andxew-^-CofUfffiMd

matie reUtions with TexaSt ^94; otden to Gaines
proper, aoa;re8cilt8of battle of New Orieaaa, ^41
Jay, William, on Mexican claims. 167, x68
JefiEeraon, Pres. Tbomas, on fofeign piotectoxates in

America, 944
Johnson, W. F., on Tyler «$, Polk, 157
Johnston, Alexander, Am. Poiiiiical Hist, cited, 154
Johnston, A. S.« characterized, 58^
Jones, Com. T. ap C, on Pacific coast, i74» a4X

Kearney, Gen. S. W., occupies Santa F6, 364
Kendall, G. W., 179; Texan Santa F4 ExpedUum cited;
on peonage, 66, 67-9; on constitution of Mexico,
90; on Mexican military savi^ries, 91 ; on Mexican
people, 9a; narrative, 105, 178 ^., aai-a
King, Rufus, on foreign protectorate of Texas, 348-9

leadd, H. O., Hist. War wi^ Mexico cited, 49, 50-x (un-
just slur on Texans), 90-1, 127, 142, 173, 174, 268

Lafitte, Jean, his pirates, 52 (in Jackson's army), 69

La Salle, R. C. de, policy, 89

Llano, , murder of prisoners, 77

Louisiana Purchase, 31, 32; indefinite boundaries,
223-4; saved by victory of New Orleans, 241

Lowell, J. R., Biglow Papers quoted, 12-13; not au-
thority, 13, 14

Lyell, Sir C, not authority on Mexican War, 13-14

MacDonald, William, Jacksonian Democracy quoted,

133. 150
McMaster, J. B., Hist. U. S. cited, loi, 102, no
Maine, the, blowing up of, 16 1-2
Matamoros, Mariano, execution of, 77
May, T. E., Constitutional History cited, 35
Mayo, Dr. Robert, value of his evidence, 45-6

Index 285

Mexican War, area added to U. S. by, 32; a certainty
independent of Texas question 184; course and
conduct, 266 ^.; results in national unity, 269-71;
terms of peace, 272 ff.

Mexico, acts compared with Texas, 50-1 ; early efforts
to settle Texas, 51-3 ; failure to give protection, 52 ;
condition under Spain, 73 #.; Indians of, 75; gains
independence, 79-80; recognized by U. S., 80-1;
under Iturbide, Victoria, and Santa Anna, 79-85;
no effective occupancy of Texas, 89-91, 112; sav-
agery of officials, 91; ferocious proclamation, 113,
118; treaty with Texas matle and broken, 125-6;
anarchic condition, 127-130; reasons for recogniz-
ing, weaker than for Texas, 138-9, 159-63; cruel-
ties in Texas of long standing, 162-3; U. S. claims -^.^_
against, 164 ff.; English and French, 165; conduct
to U. S. , 1 73-4 ; obstruct iveness on claims question,
176-7; contrast of people and rulers, 18 1-2; U. S.
diplomatic correspondence with, 185 ^.; paper war ^^^.^
with Texas, 186, 264; breaks off diplomatic rela^
tions with U. S., 190-1 ; demands that U. S. outlaw
Texans and suppress no Indian raids, 193-4; boun-
daries with U. S., 197 ff. I absurd claims of dignity,
200; provisional declaration of war, 204-5, 262-3;
again breaks off relations, 207; refusal of Slidell

mission, 20S ff.; offers from U. S. 212; boundary*— '

questions, 214 ff.; "military" expeditions into,
22Sff.; losses by the war, 272 ff.; anarchy after it,
274

Milam, Benjamin, capture of San Antonio, 108; killed,
109

Mina, Gen. F. J., insurrection, 52-3 ; execution, 78

Monasterio, , Mexican minister, 171, 191-a

Monroe Doctrine, 244-5

Morelos, J. M., defeat at Pascuaro, 77; execution, 78

Morfitt, H. M., on Rio Grande boundary, 141, 272

^86 Index

Nfles, J. M., direct autliority <m Mexican War, v,, 36-d;

dbHTacter and authority, ai ff.; CwU Officer, a6;
^ Jiisi. S. Amer. 0nd Mexico, 37^ cited on Mexican

bistory, 96-7; justifies Texas annexation, s8, 50;

and boundaries, 38-9; disfavors annexation of

Bfexioo, sg; depiiecates "manifest destiny/' 34;

Hisiary cited, 4a, 43. 54. 60, 6a, 64. 66, 7a, 74, 75*

76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83, 85, 95, loi. 110, 113, 115, 116.

S06, 340, 96X
Noll, A. H., From Empire to RepMic cited, 354
Nueces River, reasons for making boundary, 133, 134;

confosed with Sabine, z86; question of boundary,

O'DonoJu, Juan, signs treaty with Mexico, 80-1, 139
Oregon question entangled with Texas, 151, 153
Owen, C. H., personal note, 16-19

Paredes, Mariano, dictatorship, 309
Pascuaro, battle of, massacre of prisoners, 77
Pease, L. T., direct authority on Mexican War, v., 26

Pedraza, , presidency, 83

Peonage, shocking conditions of, 16, 65-9
Point Isabel, Taylor's base, 267-8
Polk, Pres. J. K., 3; meaning of election, 30-1 ; acqui-
esces in Tyler's course on annexation, 157; reported
on proposed measures, 210
Porter, Com. David, Foxardo affair, 48
Press, Hartford, foundation and auspices, 24

Quautla [Cuautla], massacre at, 79

Reid, Mayne, 57; The Free Lances, 187

Remedios, massacre at, 78

Rhodes, J. F., not authority on Mexican War, v. ; frivo-
lous choice of authorities, 11-15; cited, 42, 45, 147,
169 (on J. Q. Adams), 247

Index 287

Rio Grande, as boundary, 94, 108, no, ia6, 127, 131*
134, 140-1, 215, 254^.

Roosevelt, Theodore, on "manifest destiny," 34

Rusk, T. J., 59; on "Mexican government," ia6

Sabine River as boundary, 53, 121, 198-9

Salazar, , murder of prisoners, 180

San Antonio de Bexar, captured by Texans, 108; the
Alamo and its heroes, 1 14-18

San Jacinto, battle of, 122-5

Santa Anna, A. L. de, Niles on his presidency, 27; estab-
lishes Guerrero, 81 ; and Bust^mante, 82; succeeds
him, 83; coup d* ^tai, 83-5; atrocities at Zacatecas,
84-5; uses Texas as base of revolution, 99-100;
advance on San Antonio, 113; capture of the
Alamo, 1 1 5-1 8; orders all prisoners of war butch-
ered, 118; carries it out on Fannin's, 119; crosses
Brazos, 121; burns Harrisburg, 122; battle of San
Jacinto, 122-5; prisoner and signs treaty of Texan
independence, 125-6; breaks it as soon as free, 126;
paper war with Houston, 186, 264; murder of
prisoners, 186, 264; ferocious orders for Mexican
War, 265

Santa F6, 257-8; expedition, 178 ^., 219, 232-3

Schouler, James, on Polk's war message, 2; acknow-
ledgment of bias, 9-1 1 ; blindly followed, 11; on
"wolf and lamb," 33; cited, 43 (on Virginia), 45,
no, 116 (on Santa Anna), 137, 165, 166 (on Mex-
ican claims), 168 (on diplomacy), 196 (on Gaines'
" invasion"), 206, 210 (on Polk), 241, 259 (on Rio
Grande boundary), 260 ^

Schurz, Carl, cited, 44; on haste in recognizing Texas,
137; on motives for annexation, 142; on Clay's
belief in decay of slavery, 150; on Polk issues,
153; on Van Buren and annexation, 162; on
Mexican claims, 169, 175, 176, 206; on Webster

a88 Index

Schttn, Carl-*Cbff#lm««l

and foreign designs on Texas, 237-^; on ^ Rio

Grande boundary, 955, 257, 965;^ on Taylor's

movement, 356
Schuyler, Eugene, died, ao8
Slavery, Mexioo and Texas, 43 1 44 ; compared wittt-peon*

<^t ^S'i^t P^ ^ forwarding annexation, 143-49

Sliden, John, mission, to Bfexico, 206 ff, ; slur on, 911, 963
Smith, Ashbel, on foreign protectorate of Texas, 947;

career and authofiity , 949-50 ; cited, 351
Smith, ''Deaf,'! ip7, A93 (cuts bridge at San Jacinfto)
Smith, Goldwin, on "wolf and lamb," 3; on Houston's

expedition, 44 1
&nith« Henry, of Ky., 60 ; Texan Secretary of the Treas-

uiy, 198
Spain, home and foreign contrast, 79-3; colonial sys-

licm, 73-5; pc^icy in colonizing Texas, 89
^MHics, B. B., UnUed States cited, 45; on exaggerated

Mexican claims, 166
Stiles' Hist, Ancient Windsor cited, 95
Strother, D. H., on Mexican peonage, 66-7
Sumner, W. G., on Jackson's Texas ** conspiracy," 45-9;
on military demoralization, 47-8; on Texas boun-
dary claim, 135; on forcing on of Mexican War,
156; on Mexican claims, 166-7; ^^ Gaines' "inva-
sion," 196

Taylor, Zachary, state of army in Mexican War, 48;
preliminary orders, 263-4, 266; operations, 266 ff.

Texans, unjust slur on, 50-1, 109

Texas, area annexed, 32; foundation of, 42 ^.; Mexican
anti-slavery decree rescinded for, 43, 44; early
Spanish settlements in, 51-3; Mexico extended no
protection to, 52, 70-1; refugees in, 54-5; fighting
adventures in, 55-60; early U. S. attempts to pur-

Index 289

chase, 86-8; not effectively Occupied by Mexico,
89, 93-6, 113; joined with Coahuila, 97; aids in
setting up Santa Anna, 100; petitions for separate
government, loi ; left without any, 101-3; ordered
disarmed, 102; first war at Gonzales, 104-5; ^^^'
quers to Rio Grande, no; war ended at San Ja-
cinto, 113-25; maintains boundary of Rio Grande,
127; proclaims it, 134; claim to water-shed of Rio
del Norte, 133; delays in recognition, 129-40;
recognized, 137; claim stronger than Cuba or Mex-
ico, 138-9, 159-63; cf. Grant and Lee, 139; mo-
tives for annexation, 142 ff,; advantage for trade,
151; methods of annexation debated, 155-6; rea-
sons why hastened, 157^.; paper war with Mexico,
186; boundaries with U. S., 197^.; threatened
foreign protectorate, 243 ^.
Travis, W. B., career, 57; drives out Mexican officials,

103; at the Alamo, 1 14-18
Trist, N. P., commissioner to Mexico, 271, 273
Turner, F. J., Rise of New West cited, 1 70
Tyler, Pres. John, 3; on Texas annexation, 145; secret
message of 1844, 148-9; utterances and character,
149-50; reason for hastening Texas annexation,
157; course defended, 157-8; on Texas boundary
question, 214-15, 258-9; fears foreign occupation
of Texas, 242
Tyler, L. G., Life and Times of the Tylers cited, 50, 89,
145, 146, 147, 150. 153, i53» 157, 183. 184, 188, 203.
204, 332, 238, 339, 241, 242, 254, 265

United States, credit to officials, 3-6; justice of wars,
8-9; honor of dealings, 19; oldest constitutional
government, 35; good international record, 35-6,
39-40; and Indian record, 36-9 ; pioneer in civilized
warfare, 40; in arbitration, 41; forbearance in
Texas case, 1 10-12, 163; general sympathy for

2^0 Index

United Sta^bt^-^ConHnmed

Texasi 128-9; slow to recogtuxe Texan indepSnd-
— r enoe, 129-31; claims against Mexico, 164 /f;; for-
beacanoe in poshing, X75HS; sladcness in de£^ndii^
citissens, 189-3; diplomatic correspondence with
Mexico, iBsff.; offer to pay claims, 2x1; boondfiuies
' wiUi Mexico, 214 ^.; canse of annexing Texas, 237->^
y 53 ; takes Texas war and all^ 204-5, 262-3 > i^p^ted
■"^ generosity to Mexico, 27SHJ
Upshnr, A. P., on J. Q. Adams' chaiges, 145; on Cali-
fornia, so6
Urrea, Gen., orders all fxrisoners of war butchered, i x8 ;
exectt^ it on Fannin's cc»mnand, X19; bntchery
at Agtxa Dolce, X88-9

Van Bttxen, Martin, on J. M. Niles, 25; declines annex-
ing Texas, x62
Velasco, treaty of, X25-6, 139, X40
Victoria, Guadalupe, presidency of, 8x

Webster, Daniel, on J. Q. Adams' charges, 145 ; on value

of San Francisco, 152, 210; as Secretary of State,

158; remonstrance with Mexico, 187-8 203-4; as

to foreign designs on Texas, 237-8
Welles, Gideon, on J. M. Niles, 25
Wells, D. A., on injustice of Mexican War, 15-16; on

peonage, 66-7
Wharton, W. H., 59; Texan minister to U. S., 128
Whartons in Texas, 59

Wilcox, C. M., Hist. Mexican War cited, 48, 184, 268
Williams, A. M., direct authority on Mexican War, v.,

mention, 3; Sam Houston cited, 53, 60, 84, 119

128, 140
Woolsey, T. D., judgment in Mexican War casual, v.,

135-6; admits extreme value of territory, 135, 150;

reasons in Cuban case weaker than in Texan^

136 #., 159

Index 291

Wosten, W. G., Hist. Texas cited, 94
Wright, Silas, on J. M. Niles, 25

Yoakum, H. K., direct authority on Mexican War, v.,
mention, 3 ; Ht5/. Texas cited, 58, 117, 188, 189, 193

Zacatecas, betrayal and massacre at, 84-5: American
citizens involved, 178

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